the LAST FILM YOU'VE SEEN thread

[Chris Knipp]

Going by reports I wasn't going to see this, but now I'll reconsider.

It was partly shot in Berkeley, in fact I walked by them making it.

[Chris Knipp]

Benoît Jacquot, Sade (2000) Netflix DVD

An admirable antidote to Philip Kaufman's tiresome and campy Quills(2000)with Geoffrey Rush, this features a fluent, strangely appealing, only mildly reptilian Daniel Auteuil, whose tireless acting fluency here reminded me of Al Pacino. No "de": Sade is at pains to deny he's a noble and favors the revolution and expresses contempt for Christianity and particularly the notion of a Supreme Being which the momentarily ruling Robespierre is promoting. Sade is being held with a lot of aristos at a big "asylum," actually a country-club style prison at Pictus, a former convent with a grand park where everyone is paying a manager for what favors they can afford hoping to remain there till the guillotine is retired or they start beheading some other group. In fact the Reign of Terror ends and Robespierre and his Jacobins are out and the asylum is vacated . (This all takes place ten years before Quills, I'm told.) But meanwhile Pictus is a bizarre mixture of frivolity and horror, since cart-loads of decapitated bodies are being brought to be buried in mass graves, leaving a horrible stench and reminding the inhabitants they could be next to go.

Sade's libertine stances and immense self confidence make him attractive to rebellious young people and he particularly chooses to instruct and flirt with the young Emilie de Lancris, played by "gamine du jour" (Hoberman) Isild Le Besco (of the 2004 À tout de suite). Eventually, in the film's most "shocking" scene, Sade arranges for Emilie to be deflowered in his presence by the tall young gardener, Augustin (Jalil Espert), getting Augustin to whip him first, which turns Autustin on. The longtime mistress he calls "Sensible" (Marianne Denicourt) lives in town with their little boy and the uptight, sadistic Fournier (Grégoire Colin), a nervous member of Robespierre's inner circle. There are scenes with Fournier and Sensible; and others when Sensible and the boy visit Sade, whom Fournier doesn't like, but protects out of love for Sensible. There is also an orientalist pageant depicting the "joys of captivity" which begins as a staging of one of Sade's milder plays. There are astonishingly bright-colored and eccentric costumes, which are apparently true to the fashions of the Terror. Jacquot, in a brief interview which is the DVD's only extra, says he took pains to have all details authentic. But it tends to feel like a project whose vague aim was simply to make a movie about Sade starring Daniel Auteuil. In that Jacquot succeeded; otherwise; he rehabilitates the writer's reputation, or presents him more as a serious figure than an ogre, monster of depravity, or household word. An interesting and smart film, but not a profoundly memorable one.

[arsaib4]

I don't think that Jacquot’s Sade is "an admirable antidote" to Kaufman’s Quills, but its vision is certainly quite contrasting. As extravagant as the English language film was, it still offered numerous pleasures that seemed to be missing in the French's sterile, almost "masterpiece theater" kind of environment. I’m not sure if the Marquis’ Charenton visit is being retreaded here but Auteuil’s rather sensitive, bleary-eyed portrayal turns him into what he should never be: boring. On the other hand, while Rush’s lunatic tactics were also hard to take at times, he was still incessantly watchable. Our "gamine du jour" exudes sensuality but not the innocence required to perverse the ultimate debauchery. And so the affair turns out to be rather mild all around. It was also hard to buy Colin as a sadistic count.

________

Avoid Siri's Hostage at all costs.

[Chris Knipp]

No problem with Siri's Hostage: I'm not tempted. Were you? I didn't even realize Grégoire Colin was supposed to be a count. He was a no account count. I agree Auteuil's and Jacquot's Sade is a bit boring. I didn't find the gamine du jour particularly attractive (as she is in A tout de suite). But I definitely do persist in finding Sade an antidote to the tiresome and tediously campy Quills, and admirable because it brings us closer to the historical period in which it's set -- and closer to taking the man seriously as an intellectual figure, instead of seeing him as he is in Quills, as a grotesque scenery-chewing clown. If you found Rush watchable, perhaps that's because he wants so desperately to be watched.

[Chris Knipp]

Gaspar Noë's Seul contre tous/I Stand Alone (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1582).

[Chris Knipp]

Craig Lucas: The Dying Gaul.

http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1583

[Chris Knipp]

Rent.

[arsaib4]

It was partly shot in Berkeley, in fact I walked by them making it.

Yeah, Gere's character taught at Berkeley.

No problem with Siri's Hostage: I'm not tempted. Were you?

No, not because of Siri, but it sounded like a Die Hard clone with Willis. It turned out to be crass and offensive.

[Chris Knipp]

Yeah, Gere's character taught at Berkeley.

I realize that, but it could have been shot in Canada. I think his house was a Berkeley house. I'll let you know when I see it.

It turned out to be crass and offensive.

That's a shame. But you watched it ,then?

[arsaib4]

IMDB lists all CA locations for the film so it's safe to go with that.

Yes, unfortunately I did watch Hostage, the reason why I said what I did. Didn't realize that you've now become a fan of French action films.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't think I'm becoming a fan of French action films particularly. I'm just watching pretty much whatever recent French (language) films I haven't previously seen that are available on Netflix and seeing how I like them. The Siri film was nifty but not very memorable; Crimson Rivers sticks more in my mind maybe because of having both Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel and featuring a good commentary by them and Kassovitz as an extra. That was my first time watching a film commentary on a recent film in French, and I enjoyed that. They really went into a lot of detail about the circumstances, chronology, and techniques of the action sequences and the character's interactions and I got a sense of their camaraderie and involvement that was fun and appealing to me.

[wpqx]

got to be brief seeing how I have no computer for the time being.

In theaters I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which imo is the best of the series so far. They do seem to get better as the characters get older, and Ralph Fiennes (this years Jude Law) makes a great appearance as Voldemort.

At home I watched Vera Drake (fantastic), A Very Long Engagement (pretty good), Office Space (I know finally), Kung Fu Hustle (everything I hoped it would be) and Hotel Rwanda (much better than I expected). Sorry for the quick and cheap reviews, but time is of the essence.

[Chris Knipp]

Lucile Hadzihalilovic: Innocence. (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1590) French-only dvd bought in Paris in October.

[arsaib4]

Peter has created a space for this film in the "In Theaters Now" section; you might wanna post your review there.

I am very much looking forward to watching Innocence. Seems like it turned out to be a good selection for you from Paris.

[Chris Knipp]

Some of my good selections I couldn't buy because they were too expensive, but this one had a nice price at Fnac, €15.

[Chris Knipp]

Ilan Duran Cohen: Confusion of Genders/La Confusion des genres (2000) Netflix dvd

Dry French comedy doesn't always travel well

Confusion here means inability to choose, but also suggests profusion, plethora, -- a delirious embarrassment of riches (and choices). At the center of every scene is bisexual lawyer Alain (Pascal Greggory). Everybody wants him, or thinks he wants them -- handsome imprisoned murderer Marc (Vincent Martinez), cute gay boy Christophe (Cyrille Thouvenin), attractive and accomplished law partner Laurence (Nathalie Richard, who's more Alain's age); the prisoner's (former) girlfriend Babette (the beautiful Julie Gayet). Marc's cellmate Étienne (played by noted singer Alain Bashung) even gets involved toward the end in this dry celebration of indecision and randomness. Alain and his law partner are talking about marrying, and it's all practical and boring, except that it's impulsive too. And not utterly cold, because, though she is even more neurotically indecisive than he is, they are best friends.

Through it all Pascal Greggory has that bored, annoyed look he always has; but he registers a lot of other looks too -- he's a consumately adept movie actor and for good reason one of the busiest in France. This is very French, a sort of comedy of ill humor, sex, and indecision, a very comfortable and vernacular variation on very old themes. The hilariously grumpy and irritable haute bourgeoisie relatives of Laurence and Alain who come into play when wedding bells are in the offing include the great Bulle Ogier as Laurence's mother. The various nude scenes aren't just titillation; they're all skillfully and sometimes hilariously illustrative of characters and situations and of Alain's embarras du choix, in a film that shifts quickly from the droll to the ridiculous and back again. A scene where Alain and Christophe undress each other while Alain talks on a cell phone, Alain protesting, then acquiesing -- to give just one example -- is as funny as it is physically agile in the staging.

La Confusion des genres is quick-witted and fast-paced and has an excellent cast but it's very French, very dependent on style and tone and language, and you wouldn't necessarily expect it to go over well with Americans. US critics pretty much hated it. On Metacritic it got a 39. Many American viewers think it's pretentious and unfunny. They miss the witty but blunt dialogue (which all the French critics complement), and they don't appreciate Greggory, who's perfect here, or the delicately observed range of French social and personality types. This is as good a treatment of the pains and pleasures of the bisexual life as seen from the French 21st-century standpoint as, in its time, was John Schlesinger's very English (1971) Sunday Bloody Sunday as a treatment of that kind of life lived across the pond, though as a movie this newer one doesn't carry quite as much weight as Schlesinger's did -- and clearly, like some wines, does not travel well even now. Yet it's great fun to watch if you can even come close to keeping up with the French.

Three Frenchmen doing a voice-over commentary in English for an American DVD doesn't turn out very well either. Director Duran Cohen studied at NYU Film School and and is fluent, but he's paired with Greggory and Thouvenin, who come across as both tight-lipped and short on vocabulary, and the conversation never gets going. Why didn't they do it in French with subtitles as Kassovitz, Cassel, and Reno did so entertainingly for the US Crimson Rivers DVD? Then maybe they would have been relaxed and talkative, as the Crimson Rivers team was, and something more informative might have resulted.

[arsaib4]

Proof, one of the numerous delayed releases from the Weinsteins-owned Miramax, is a compact, gripping and highly-effective drama from Director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love [1998]). Based on a stage play by David Auburn (who co-wrote the film’s script with Rebecca Miller, director of films like Personal Velocity [2002] and The Ballad of Jack and Rose [2005]), Proof stars Gwyneth Paltrow as Catherine, an emotionally fragile woman whose mindset early on in the film is in just as much disarray as her domicile. The reason for her condition is that her father Robert (Anthony Hopkins), once a university professor and a mathematics mastermind, recently passed away after persistently suffering from a mental illness. Catherine, who had to drop out of school in order to take care of him, is unsure about her own mental health, even though she disagrees with her estranged older sister (Hope Davis, miscast as an insolent New Yorker), who now wants to take her for psychiatric help. But she gradually develops a relationship with Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), Robert’s committed former student attempting to uncover any traces of genius in his mentor’s old notebooks (which he eventually does). While almost claustrophobic in nature, Proof is comprised with a surprise or two to jolt the proceedings, that are usually maintained at a steady pace throughout. The script beautifully incorporates Catherine’s relationship with her father via flashbacks, discerning the toll it gradually took on the young woman. And Paltrow’s performance, arguably the best of her career, not only enables us to relate to her anguish, but it also overcomes a few awkwardly directed moments to guide the film to its logical, understated conclusion.

Grade: B+

__________________________

*PROOF is currently in theaters. Its DVD release date is Feb 14th.

[Chris Knipp]

I thought I had posted a review of Proof on this site, but I can't find it. It can be found here; (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=467) on Filmwurld the thread started earlier for Proof is here (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=776&highlight=proof) -- but nobody who actually saw the movie made a contribution there. My problems with Proof can be summed up as follows:

--artificiality of the action attributable to too-direct transfer from play to movie; dryness of the action for the same reason -- a possible danger noted (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=776&highlight=proof) by JustaFied in his opening of the Proof thread
With so much available to a filmmaker (i.e. use of background scenery, music, editing, special effects, lighting, etc.), is the filming of a play just plain boring?--lack of interest in the Robert (Anthony Hopkins) character compared to, for instance, the math genius in Beautiful Mind (a movie I find pernicious, but whose effectiveness I fully acknowledge)

--slowness of the flashbacks

--important casting weaknesses: as time goes on, Jake looks nuttier than Gwyneth, who's suppose to be possibly crazy; Hopkins convincing as an example of dementia but not as a genius (I did think there was some chemistry between Gweneth and Jake, though Hope Davis is good in her thanksless role of the bourgeois proper sister

--failure to drum up a sense of urgency over the "mystery" of who did the proof; lack of emotional punch

I concluded that the filmed Proof is "mildly entertaining, respectable, but uninspired." It rather astonishes me that you would rate it higher than Grizzly Man -- but there's no acounting for tastes!

I'm going to put this exchange over on the Proof thread.

[Chris Knipp]

Claude Chabrol: La rupture/The Breach (1970) Netflix DVD.

Study of upper bourgeois snottiness and the attempt to destroy and corrupt less fortunate people. Creepy, with a famously violent opening (before even the title), but somehow unconvincing and lacking in momentum. Stéphane Audran is immaculate and beautiful, the kind of "Ice Queen" the French liked at that time (a contrast to the slightly funkier beauties of today), Jean-Pierre Cassel is smarmy and oily, and the tireless Michel Bouquet is appropriately self-important and overstuffed as the rich in-law trying to crush Stèphane's character. But the best characters are really the minor ones, like the oddball inhabitants of the rooming house. And I'd have to say that Jean-Claude Drouot, as the ghoulish husband, is a really creepy "monstre."

But if you compare it to, say, Hitchcock or a Highsmith novel, doesn't it really just seem rather crude and odd, instead of masterful? And despite the learned commentators on the DVD saying Chabrol is period-neutral as to dress, etc., it also looked dated to me. I found it a bit hard to get through.

[Chris Knipp]

Mikael Håfström's Derailed (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1591), now in theaters, starring VIncent Cassel, Clive Owen, and Jennifer Aniston.

[arsaib4]

While subtlety isn’t a virtue associated with the recent works of British filmmaker Sally Potter (The Man Who Cried [2000], The Tango Lesson [1997]), she has consistently pushed-the-envelope when it comes to form and content. Her latest effort, Yes, an artful meditation on class, gender, religion, politics, love, etc. is an interesting, if not wholly successful, experiment which doesn’t quite have the depth to support its pragmatic themes. And so the experience ultimately is akin to interpreting an upscale magazine whose content only massages one’s intellect, instead of expanding it. The film opens fascinatingly enough: a housemaid (Shirley Henderson), who’s seen at various intervals, philosophizes (in iambic pentameter, no less) about her work while facing the camera. But then we’re in familiar territory as it turns out that the house belongs to our "She" (the ever-elegant Joan Allen’s name in the credits), an Irish-American biologist, and her uptight husband (Sam Neill), a British politician. Needless to say, the marriage is an unhappy one, and that’s where "He" (French actor Simon Abkarian), a Lebanese cook, comes in. Their relationship is fulfilling early on, but the differences between the duo eventually come to the forefront, especially after "He" gets involved with an argument with a few clichéd types at work. And Potter’s approach also starts to become heavy-handed. If she didn’t already have enough issues to deal with, she throws in a few sequences involving a teenager’s weight problems. Potter’s musical sense is impeccable as always, but her visual choices, while endearing at first, eventually become intrusive.


Yes - Grade: C

[arsaib4]

Mikael Håfström's Derailed

Based on this and a few other films you've recently reviewed, it seems like your agenda is to simply oppose whatever the critics seem to be saying. Not long ago, it used to be the exact opposite. What do you think? ;)

[Chris Knipp]

It may look that way for the moment, but I don't have an agenda, as should be obvious since you're basing your conclusion on this "and a few other" comments of mine, not all of them. But it is often interesting, and indeed necessary, as someone who comes in after press screenings, to point out what the general run of critics have not seen or said. It's not simple opposition -- a you say black I say white kind of thing. It's a corrective, and an attempt to develop nuances. You will find other critics who say what I say, unfortunately for me. There are several who pointed out in print that Derailed is quite enjoyable if you overlook its last segment, which is basically what I am also doing. I am not giving this movie a high rating. I'm just pointing out that it's enjoyable.

[arsaib4]

Arnaud Desplechin's Kings and Queen (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=13748#post13748) (2005)

Jacques Rivette's The Story of Marie and Julien (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=13680#post13680) (2005)

[Chris Knipp]

Joe Thomas's Pride and Prejudice (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1594) (2005) in theaters now.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I concluded that the filmed Proof is "mildly entertaining, respectable, but uninspired." It rather astonishes me that you would rate it higher than Grizzly Man -- but there's no acounting for tastes!

I hope y'all don't find it redundant for me to reinstate my argument regarding the subjectivity of film appreciation. There's no accounting for taste, indeed. It's mostly about personal predilections, interests, values, biases, mood and level of attention while viewing, etc. I've had plenty of disagreements with Chris this year. Now arsaib4 gives a "C" to Yes, one of my candidates for Best Film of the year (definitely a Top 10, a second viewing will decide placement).

One either assumes one's taste/intellect/discernment/knowledge of the medium to be better or greater than "the other" or buys into the subjectivity argument. Once you do the latter, films become a way of helping you learn about your own biases/predilections/interests/values and those of others you find interesting. Writing and reading film reviews is a lot more fun and edifying when it stops being about who's right or wrong.

This is the reasoning behing my advocacy for a more personal type of criticism. Using the personal "I" rather than the royal "We", which presumes that others will have similar reactions or arrive at the same conclusions as the writer. It's not necessary for the critic to use many "I statements" (although it doesn't hurt, Georgia Brown used this approach effectively) but the criticism I prefer seems to incorporate awareness that criticism is mostly advocating for one's subjective opinion.

[arsaib4]

Apparently Oscar Jubis only has a problem when someone negatively reviews one of his "favorites." The quote he used to make his statement simply further proves his ignorance.

[Chris Knipp]

I would never say Oscar "proves his ignorance. " He's constantly proving and increasing his knowledge. But in his theory about reviewing he carries subjectivity too far and fails to recognize that some reviewers are better than others. He is lowering reviews in his definition to a mere subjective expression of opinion in which everybody is equal, but yet he gets upset when somebody's review fails to gibe with his. That's illogical.

I haven't seen Yes, but it got terrible reviews and sounded a bore. Hence it's more surprising, simply on a statistical basis, that Oscar counts it potentially among the year's best than that arsaib4 just gave it a "C."

"There's no accounting for taste" doesn't mean all reviewing is equally subjective and a mere personal outpouring. It means that once somebody's made a judgment about the meriitc of a film there's no way of convincing them otherwise. But as we respect each other's opinions, to that extent we may be moved to reconsider.

[arsaib4]

Thanks for the post, Chris.

I don’t like getting angry but his ignorance once again astounds me. I always speak confidently for myself and don’t make specific comments regarding how others will perceive a particular film; the words “we,” “one,” or “you,” don’t necessarily correlate to “others” in reviews. On the other hand, this quote certainly DOES: “It's just that Yes is the type of film that conjures up the sarcastic, jaded and Philistinic out of reviewers, particularly those employed by mainstream dailies.” That came from our champion of “I.” If I didn’t respect members like you, Chris, and especially our moderator, I truly would’ve ripped into this… person.

This member also tends to forget to use “I” when his reviews follow mine: The Constant Gardener (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1502) (his post there is eerily similar to mine) and Sometimes in April (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1247) are two of numerous examples.

He also misused your quote, Chris, to eventually come to something different altogether. I really can’t do anything about this, but I truly hope that people like him stay out of my threads.

[Chris Knipp]

One either assumes one's taste/intellect/discernment/knowledge of the medium to be better or greater than "the other" or buys into the subjectivity argument. No. It isn't a simple "either/or." That's the mistake in Oscar's argument. There's no need to make a choice between some sort of hubristic, egocentric conviction that one is invincible and "buying into the subjectivty argument." As I just wrote, some reviewers are better than others, but ultimately which ratings reviewers give to which films is unpredictable. Clearly some people do have more knowledge, taste, and discernment, but there's no one right opinion about a film.

I want to say I hope everybody gets into everybody else's threads. That's what this kind of site is for, a free exchange of ideas, information, and opinions. Let's not lose our cool, here. There wouldn't be much to Filmwurld without either Oscar or arsaib. Let's have dialgue, not standoffs. I'm obliged to both of you for bringing up this interesting topic for another look.

[Chris Knipp]

Carnet d'Ados -- la vie quand même/ Life after All. Olivier Péray 2000. (made for TV, in the US straight- to-DVD, netflix)

After their parents die in an accident, the older brother Vincent, 19 (Matthieu Tribes) wants to care for the younger one, Lucien (Maxime Monsimier) who's about 10. Somewhat reminiscent of The Cement Garden, because it's about kids trying to live on
after their parents die, and the smaller one retreats into an unhealthy fantasy world, while the older tries to escape his guilt through love-making.. The boy Lucien's playing with flowers is reminiscent of René Clément's Forbidden Games. For a TV movie, quiet and gracefully done; but the ending is too easy.

In Extremis/To the Extreme(Etienne Faure, 2000). US DVD.

Livelier treatment of a very similar theme can be found in another straight-to-DVD in US French film, about a wild bisexual guy, Thomas (Sébastien Roch) who seeks permission to raise the son of his girlfriend, Grégoire AKA Grég, Jérémie Sanguinetti) after she passes. In that one, more reality is confronted, much more happens, and the acting is fun to watch and includes Julie Depardieu and Jean-Claude Brialy. Far from bland TV stuff, In Extremis has other flaws such as pretension and a too-loose plot structure. Both movies seem to feel obliged to introduce more sex than their orphan theme needs. In Extremis is liberal in its male nudity, including the super-pretty boyfriend character, Aurélien Wiik (À travers le forêt), who's used to sell the DVD to the gay market.

[Chris Knipp]

The world of Jacques Demy/L'univers de Jacques Demy (Agnès Varda 1995). Netflix DVD.

By his wife. This is charming, and made me want to see Peau d'Ane (1970). Lola(1961) is by far my favorite of the few Demy films I've seen. Of course there are a lot I haven't seen.

[arsaib4]

Werner Herzog's The White Diamond (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=13794#post13794) (2005)

Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=13772#post13772) (TIFF)

[wpqx]

Well The Squid and the Whale wasn't possible, so we had to go by what was playing at the time. So Pride and Prejudice, which I wasn't about watching. I'm suspicious of remakes, and extremely suspicious of costume drama crap designed to win awards. That said I found Pride and Prejudice a fantastic movie. I had no expectations for it, but it was much better than I could have imagined. I'll try and get a proper review later.

Also watched Eternal Sunshine again on DVD, nice film to watch in a group.

[arsaib4]

I guess with Domino I watched the wrong Keira Knightley movie.

L'univers de Jacques Demy / la vie quand même

Looks like your Netflix queue is getting a workout. That's how it was with me but I eventually got a little tired of it. Now I only subscribe every other month.

[Chris Knipp]

I didn't see Domino so can't comment, but she has gotten into something more arty no doubt with Pride and Prejudice, at least I guess it thinks it is. Netflix burnout coming? Maybe. This has been a time when I was in the Bay Area with not so many good movies to go to in theaters, but even so, it is a bit much, true. We'll see. I want to get through their recent French films that I haven't seen. There aren't really that many. Have you seen Téchiné's Barocco? Watching minor efforts is work. But there's always something to see, and to say. Visually it is stunning in many ways, and it shows T. has always liked those long horizontal tracking shots. I have Demy's Peau d'Ane and Baie des anges in my Netflix queue.

[arsaib4]

"Why is it that all the straight critics think BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN isn’t gay, or at least gay enough? Spit-lubed buttsex and onscreen kissing and, gee, two men falling desperately, tragically in love with each other? Sounds pretty gay to me, but then I don’t take for granted a corny Hollywood romance that reflects my sexuality since, uh, they don’t exist. I’ll concede that BROKEBACK is, with the exception of Ledger’s performance, mediocre filmmaking, but I wish all you hip, with-it heteros would stop running to the defense of us ill-served gays. Three cheers for middle-brow man-on-man masochistic romanticism, says I. I’ve been watching you straights wallow in it long enough."

Nathan Lee responding to Dave Kehr's rather "straight" review of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.

[wpqx]

I'll be honest Brokeback Mountain looks rather awful, but I have no faith in Ang Lee whatsoever.

I did finally watch Murderball, which means that yes I have watched all of my dvd's. I either have to go out and get more or re-watch something. Hurrah for me. I realize though that if I'm actually going to get a top ten for this year done in any timely manner, I should really get out to the theater more, but damn it's FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE.

If I had a DVD burner I probably would use Netflix, but I'm a fan of renting a dozen films a weekend, whenever possible.

[Chris Knipp]

Nathan Lee's attitude toward both Dave Kehr and Ang Lee's new movie is understandable, not to say obligatory, for a hip young gay New York film critic. I haven't read Dave Kehr's interpretation, but I've already seen this approach, which is palliative: first of all, this is just a love story. Second, it is two men, but, hey, it's just a love story, so (Roeper) "get over it," people. As an older gay non-New Yorker (though I might like to be one, a New Yorker that is) who was deeply affected by the A. Annie Proulx story when it came out eight years ago, and someone who always hopes for the best when big budget, big names, and big screen come together to do something small and powerful, I'm very hopeful that Brokeback Mountain will turn out to be more than just a showplace for Heath Ledger's emerging talent as a major movie actor. I can understand wpqx's expecting the worst. He's I guess hip, young, and straight, and so in a position to say the movie "looks rather awful" without having seen it. I'll be seeing it in two days, and quite frankly to me it looks rather wonderful.

The San Francisco theater that's showing it started with a midnight showing Thursday night, and is showing it in three auditoriums. Does that tell you anything about how the distributors are expecting it to play with the average gay man in America's gayest city?

An open mind is a terrible thing to lose. But does any of us have one? Apart from my non-hip older gay enthusiasm for seeing two young near-superstar mainstream movie hunks playing in a glossy well-made gay love story, I will begin inevitably with the approach I always have when a film is closely based on a work that can conceivably qualify as literature, as just evidenced by my evaluation of the Joe Thomas Pride and Prejudice: I come in with a strong sense of the text they were working from, to see how well they did with it and when they depart from it, how well that works.

[wpqx]

Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) - Philip Kauffman

Took a damn long time to finally get this film, considering I wouldn't settle for anything short of the Criterion release. The resulting film was . . . long, really, really long. There was a lot of dead weight here, and Kauffman took a someone lean 2 hour film and milked another hour out of it. I will give Sven Nikvist credit for being the first person to ever make Czechoslovakia look beautiful, granted there were still scenes showing it as a repressive hell hole, the image most of us associate with that and all countries during their stay under the "Iron Curtain". The film is extremely sexual, but that's like saying Harry Potter is magical. I would like to applaud the acting, rather top notch as one could expect from this cast, I really admired the ridiculous amount of self confidence that Daniel Day Lewis was able to bring to his role.

[Chris Knipp]

André Téchiné: Barocco. (1976).

DVD bought in Paris, supplied with English subtitles. This is early and inferior Téchiné but not without any rewards. The noirish plot of an ex-prizefighter (Gérard Depardieu) who gets killed by a Mafia hireling (also played by Depardieu) when he fails to do what he's been paid by them to do, claim a homosexual affair with a political candidate they want to ruin, is surreal and without conviction. Neither Depardieu nor a young Isabelle Adjani, nor Jean-Claude Brialy (as a newspaper editor) and some other good actors, can save it. But for a Seventies movie it is surprisingly up to date in its elegant look, beautfiful color, stiking compositions, and typically Téchiné use of wide aspect ratio and long right-to-left pans. That doesn't make it a good movie, but it makes it a pleasure to look at. Depardieu was surprisingly lean and buff at this time, but Adjani looked better later when she got some more age and character in her face. As the prizefighter's girlfriend who then befriend's his killer, without noticing that he looks exactly the same (except for hair dyed dark brown), she has an impossible task.

The images are beautiful, but the soundtrack is rather murky.

[arsaib4]

I have seen Téchiné's Barocco but it's not very fresh in my mind. I think it's available on DVD here.

"But for a Seventies movie it is surprisingly up to date in its elegant look, beautfiful color, stiking compositions, and typically Téchiné use of wide aspect ratio and long right-to-left pans." I'm not sure what you mean. Why is the look surprising?

Nathan Lee should be a regular at the Times or the Voice.

[Chris Knipp]

"But for a Seventies movie it is surprisingly up to date in its elegant look, beautfiful color, striking compositions, and typically Téchiné use of wide aspect ratio and long right-to-left pans." I'm not sure what you mean. Why is the look surprising? I'm not sure what you mean. Why would this statement not be clear? I didn't say the look was surprisiing; I said it was surprisingly up to date in its look. A lot of Seventies movies look dated (obtrusive camera movement, excessive zooms, stuff like that) and the color often doesn't look very good. I'm sure you know what I mean about the emphasis on horizontality; you've probably noticed Téchiné loves long horizontal tracking shots over a landscape, a field, etc. Here he does it both with interiors and with streets. I'd have to watch the film with you to point out details of what I mean, I can't describe it in words here. It's just very fresh looking visually; I think Téchiné was very into giving the film a nice look. He has a lot of carefully composed, perhaps almost too studied shots with a lot of color, both in interiors, including the whore's room and the nightclub, especially the singer with the long stage and the tall dancer who comes up to join her, a very horizontal shot, and a number of outdoor street scenes that have long horizons, crowd compositions in which the eye picks out the principals. In terms of visual composition this is a film worth watching. The plot is silly and uninteresting so one focuses on the visual, and it's pretty clear that he did too.

[wpqx]

Death by Hanging (1968) - Nagisa Oshima

Finally got some of those impossible to find Oshima films, or at least a film. From what I've read, he doesn't have any sort of style, and that no two films are really alike. Death by Hanging is nothing like his other films I've seen, and I'm not sure what to make of it, because it's not quite like any other film I've seen.

The story begins somewhat Japanese New Wave esque, with a description of an execution and then we witness one. Next thing we find out, the condemned man "R", didn't die. He winds up somewhat demented, and the executioners spend the rest of the film trying to remind him who he is so that he'll remember his guilt so they can hang him again. Yet before it gets to the end everyone's sanity is questioned, and I severely couldn't tell what the hell was real and surreal. Still a fascinating film, and I really hope to be able to find more of his nearly impossible to locate 60's films. This one certainly was intriguing enough.

[oscar jubis]

I'd love to have a chance to watch Death by Hanging again, over 20 years after first viewing. The anti-death penalty subtext is strong. The fact that R is Korean and the executioners are Japanese is not coincidental. It's rather symbolic of the history between the two nations.

[Chris Knipp]

Paula Fouce: Naked in Ashes. Curently showing. Nice little documentary about Indian yogis focusing on one of them and his disciple and culminating in the festival of Kumbh Mela. Not particularly outstanding as a documentary film -- not very analytical, and a lot of English voiceovers are provided which may feel like a separation from the actual people -- but the raw material is extraordinary, and Fouce has followed the main yogi up into the mountain snows twice, when he went barefoot in nothing but a loin cloth. He has a great deal to say, and is thoroughly aware of issues like global warming.

Stephen Gaghan's much-anticipated Syriana (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/newreply.php?s=&action=newreply&postid=13846).

[arsaib4]

Spare Parts (Rezervni Deli), the Slovenian entry for the foreign-language Academy Award a couple of years ago, is a competent and intermittently compelling drama which details the lives of a pair of traffickers smuggling illegal immigrants across their borders. Set in Krsko, a bleak industrial town in southern Slovenia which borders both Croatia and Italy, the film follows Ludvik (Peter Musevski) and his young assistant Rudi (Aljosa Kovacic) as they receive groups from the East heading towards Western Europe. Ludvik, a middle-aged man who often reminisces about his days as a national speedway champion, is a widower whose wife died of cancer, a disease said to be associated with the local nuclear power plant. His health is also deteriorating, but he doesn’t allow it to slow him down. Certainly a situation ripe to be exploited, but writer-director Damjan Kozole’s employs a detached approach which, at times, also works against him. To his credit, the mistreatment of immigrants early on, especially in the case of a young Macedonian girl, is presented rather matter-of-factly -- and he doesn’t allow the situation to become the central conflict after Rudi, unlike his counterparts, doesn’t take advantage of her. Also, the tentative relationship Rudi develops with a local girl (Aleksandra Balmazovic) is devoid of any melodrama. Having said that, other than a few glib musings from Ludvik regarding the current state of Europe, Kozole’s attempt to paint his protagonists as products of the system seems halfhearted, and thus the film never quite achieves the depth of similar efforts like La Promesse (1996) and Lichter (2003). The title refers to what becomes of the immigrants after they crossover to the west, as some are forced to sell their organs or are killed for them.


Grade: B
_______________________

*SPARE PARTS premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2003 (In-Competition).

*The film was released stateside by Film Movement (https://www.filmmovement.com/Default.aspx) in November.

[trevor826]

Thanks arsaib4, I've had "Spare Parts" sitting around for a couple of weeks now along with a few others including Claire Denis's "The Intruder". Your comments have given me the incentive to see it asap, hopefully I'll be able to add my thoughts soon.

Cheers Trev.

[wpqx]

Somewhere in the Night (1946) - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Well in my years of watching movies I've seen a lot of Mankiewicz and a lot of noir. Some films are inspired, some are mediocre, and some are just plain bad. In the case of Something In the Night I remembered why I watch movies, to discover that one magnificent film in a completely unexpected place. I've been extremely hard on film noir in my time, rarely if ever handing out a perfect rating despite obvious greatness, I've been even harsher for Mankiewicz, I wouldn't even give All About Eve a 5 star rating. This film, considered a lesser Mankiewicz effort, and one of his earlier ventures into directing is in my opinion his clear masterpiece. A perfectly constructed, often brilliant, constantly compelling piece of film noir that desperately needs reevaluation, and the reputation of such gems as Laura, Double Indemnity, and Out of the Past.

Somewhere in the Night may have that chance. It recently appeared on DVD as part of Fox's amazing film noir collection. Every several months the studio puts out three of their classic noir films, and many of which, this film included, I had never heard of prior to it's release. Gems are being unearthed from the vaults, some of which hadn't even appeared on VHS. Watching Somewhere in the Night is like discovering a new piece of film history, a critical turning point in the career of Mankiewicz, and a complex and convoluted story that has a deeply satisfying pay off.

The reason for perhaps its being forgotten is the fact that the story seemed familiar at the time. There was a period when amnesia films were somewhat popular, and Somewhere deals with post war veterans, a subject that by 1946 was already starting to become overly familiar. I recall a short story by Ernest Hemmingway about a returning WWI veteran who took an extra two years to come home, which by that time no one wanted to hear his war stories, everyone was bored of "heroes". The American public may have felt the same way, after all what an easy gimmick, a grenade goes off, and bam amnesia, and there's your mystery. It's denser than that.

John Hodiak was nearly a bad choice for this role. His credits are sparse, he was one of the shipwrecked passengers in Lifeboat, but he works here. His one chance in a feature, and he shines. Makeup makes the film work. He was blown up by a grenade, and had a painful recovery. His face loses the bandage, but he comes equipped with an oh so subtle scar that makes him neither grotesque but reminds us that he was indeed a disabled veteran. This slight touch of realism works for the picture, in a world were people are still knocked out by one punch.

Richard Conte, a man who seemed to be in every Fox film in the 40's and 50's makes an appearance here, and delivers another perfect turn. He has that quality where he can both be a baffoon and a genius at the same time. A tough edge and a likeable quality if not somewhat flawed. He played this well in Jules Dassin's Thieves Highway, and shines here at his best, in a supporting role.

The love interest, as there must always be a love interest is Nancy Guild who has an instantly recognizable face despite never appearing in a movie I've seen. She has a look that works, and you can see rather early on that she is a girl to fall for, and her presence is neither as the "helpless girl" or the "tough dame". She is a real woman, a rare presence indeed in film noir, neither manipulative or gullible. I love her character, as I love nearly all other aspects of the film.

The mystery is one of identity. A similar theme was brought back in the Bourne Identity, but here was a man who didn't work for the government, but rather stole from them, or someone. A missing $2 million is enough to motivate any plot, especially when army pay at the time was $60 a month. You can see why everyone is going to such great lengths in this story for the money, and the identity of Larry Cravat, a man no one has either met nor heard from in 3 years. George Taylor is also a man with no past and no one to identify him, and his search for Cravat becomes his search for himself. A wonderful plot device that helps to unravell the story, and of course lead to much suspense, mystery, and intrigue.

I've ranted much longer on this film than most characteristic recently viewed movies, but I can't help it, I rarely feel this elation watching movies, especially American movies from the 40's considering I was convinced I saw everything great from Hollywood's golden era. Somewhere in the Night is out of DVD, and it's dirt cheap, buy it now!

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by trevor826
Thanks arsaib4, I've had "Spare Parts" sitting around for a couple of weeks now along with a few others including Claire Denis's "The Intruder". Your comments have given me the incentive to see it asap, hopefully I'll be able to add my thoughts soon.



Looking forward to your comments. I wish I had films like The Intruder sitting around. ;)

Good review, wpqx. It's been a while since I've seen any Mankiewicz.

[Chris Knipp]

[In New York]

King Kong (the new one by Peter Jackson).

Not my kind of thing, to begin with, but surely being overrated when people say it's one of the ten best. It's never too late to resist size and expense. The reviewer was right (the only one I haveread) who said the sequences are drawn out too long. Especially the monsters, large and small, and their tangles with each other in the vines. Unbelievable that a great director like Jackson would turn out such an under-edited piece of work. It's not slow, just d r a w n o u t. The New York Times today says


Peter Jackson's remake of "King Kong" is, almost by definition, too much — too long, too big, too stuffed with characers and fx-driven set pieces — but it is also remarkably nimble and sweet. That's having it both ways, as we all like to do, but if something is too too too, I quesiton whether it can really still be "remarkably nimble and sweet." That too too too outweighs and cancels out the nimble sweetness.

Margaret Brown: Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes van Zandt.

Interesting, classic lonely handsome creative depressed addictive artist type who wrote great songs, "a songwriter's songwriter," Kris Kristoferson says, but not an exceptional documentary. Contrast with Tarnation, which I didn't like, but unquestionably has a stylistic originality. This makes me question whether when you have free access to old home footage, you really have to use all of it. A better movie would have been made using the music, some selected interviews, and a few images of the man.

[Chris Knipp]

Debra Granik's Down to the Bone 2004, currently at Quad Cinema, New York.

A drama about a woman struggling to recover from drug addiiction starring Vera Farmiga and Hugh Dillon. This won directing and acting awards at Sundance for Granik and Farmiga last year. Downbeat and short on some aspects of the recovery process, but unmistakably authentic and unflashy.

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady: The Boys of Baraka (2005) Currently premiered at Film Forum.

Documentary about Baltimore ghetto youths sent to a special two-year school in Kenya to give them a scholastic future. Charming and saddening, this includes some dedicated and meticulous followup techniques, but still has certain gaps in what we'd like to know.l

[arsaib4]

The titular protagonist of Días de Santiago ("Days of Santiago"), an intense and gripping debut feature from Peruvian filmmaker Josue Mendez, is a world-weary war veteran at the age of 23. He belongs to what has been described as Peru’s "lost generation," referencing youths who were recruited to strengthen the military during the 90’s under President Alberto Fujimori. Santiago (Pietro Sibille), like many others, became a man and much more while fighting drug lords, guerrillas (the "Shining Path" movement), or the Ecuadorian army from the north. But the power granted to them ultimately took its toll, and now Santiago and his fellow surviving comrades aren’t quite able to comprehend the atrocities that were committed. Yet, they miss the discipline, the order, the mission. Early on, Mendez expertly employs both grainy b&w and color stock to distinguish his protagonist’s psychological terrain as he tries to adjust to the life back home in the economically challenged Peruvian capital of Lima. Along with battling his own demons, Santiago now also has to endure a distanced wife and a mostly indifferent family, not to mention the realities of having no educational background. He eventually starts a cab service, which not only helps him to go to school, but also enables him to associate with others, especially young woman who often pursue a protector in his mature demeanor, not realizing that he may not even be capable of saving himself (it’s obvious that Mendez is well familiar with Scorsese’s 1976 classic). Días de Santiago is important but explosive stuff -- so the 28-year-old filmmaker deserves much credit for handling it with care for the most part. It is disappointing, however, that his aforementioned methods to depict Santiago’s struggles ultimately resort to nothing more than stylistic tics. But the authenticity of the milieu and Sibille’s performance are among the reasons why the film, which happens to be Peru’s nominee in the foreign-language category for 2005 Academy Awards, "leaves a singularly raw impression of having spent time inside someone’s sweaty, ill-fitting skin." (Village Voice)

Grade: B+
_____________________

*DÍAS DE SANTIAGO was released theatrically in NYC earlier this month by Cinema Tropical, a distributor of Latin American films. The film is also available on DVD from Lions Gate films.

[hengcs]

I did not realize that I have actually watched it in Cinequest Film Festival in March 2005 until your post. I didn't even realize it was Peru's submission to Oscar this year.
;)

* guilty grin *

[trevor826]

Following arsaib4's comments, .Spare Parts comment. (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=13909#post13909)

Spare Parts - Rezervni deli 2003

Directed by Damjan Kozole

Starring Peter Musevski, Aljosa Kovacic

A film that when you strip away all the periphery is in essence a buddy movie, old hand (Ludvik- Peter Musevski) takes on greenhorn (Rudi - Aljosa Kovacic), several minor adventures ensue, greenhorn makes big mistake which nearly ends but then strengthens the partnership. In the end (and very predictably) the greenhorn has become the old hand and is himself teaching the ropes to a newbie.

What makes this different and worth seeing? Well the subject of the film is human traffiking, which is one mega-sized problem at present; the process is treated very matter of factly with no real judgement as to the rights and wrongs of it. To the guys who do it, it’s a job, a nice little earner; to the people using this method it’s a measure of sheer desperation. There are moments that make you despair for humanity such as when a young Macedonian woman is pressured into selling herself or when a family group is smuggled in a car boot only to be found dead from suffocation then unceremoniously dumped.

Along the way you find out more about the protagonists, they are not evil men but appear to have very little in the way of a conscience. Ludvik is a widower, his wife had cancer. As far as the traffiking is concerned he deals with it as if he was a regular delivery guy, load em up, ship em out, what happens then is none of his business. Rudi on the other hand is naïve to the business and the consequences, he has a pang of conscience but can he survive this type of work with it?

The process certainly appears to be honest in the way people are dealt with (certainly in regards to recent news articles). It makes you wonder how desperate must someone be to take this route? You lay your life and the lives of those you love on the line dealing with these petty crooks. What little you have in the way of possessions, dignity and money is literally stripped from you and even then, there is no guarantee that you will get where you want or arrive in one piece!

The title refers to the fact that quite a few of these illegal immigrants end up selling or having organs stolen once they escape, kidneys, liver, lungs, heart there is a market for all of these and more, who cares where or who they came from?

A lot of the younger women, girls end up being sold into prostitution, again this is brought up very matter of factly in general conversation. I’ve added a relevent note below of a very recent news item from Cardiff



JAIL FOR SEX SLAVE PAIR

By Richard Smith

TWO men were jailed yesterday for bringing a 21-year-old sex slave into Britain.
The Lithuanian woman, who was bought for £5,000, was expected to have sex with up to nine men a day and hand over her £1,225 weekly earnings to the Albanian gang bosses.
She was threatened with being cut into pieces and having her eight-year-old sister kidnapped if she tried to escape, Cardiff crown court heard.
Akil Likcami, 20, was jailed for six years after admitting trafficking and controlling a prostitute for gain. Gjerji Mungiovi-Cuka, 19, from Caldicot, Gwent, was given four years for trafficking.
Ethnic Albanian Likcami, of Cathays, Cardiff, will be deported at the end of his sentence. His friend has a UK passport and can stay in Britain.
Passing sentence, Judge Phillip Richards branded their trade "evil". The third member of the trio, known only as "Benny", is still at large.


I can understand anyone who dsliked the film with its lack of guilt or recrimination but it does give a different perspective on a growing problem. Not essential viewing but certainly worth seeing.

Cheers Trev.

BBFC rated 15

[Chris Knipp]

Ugly, relevant stuff, and right in your own backyard from the sound of the article. I haven't seen this movie but it appears to relate to Frear's Dirty Pretty Things and Moodysson's Lilja 4-Ever.
they are not evil men but appear to have very little in the way of a conscience. But they become evil because they lack a strong conscience.

[trevor826]

Not a pleasant subject but if it brings any awareness to the situation then it's for the good. What happened in Cardiff is only a tiny microbe of what's going on throughout the World, I'm damn sure that if we're getting this here then the problems in London and some of the major cities must be far worse.

You're right with your correction Chris, you can only be judged by what you do and taking advantage of people in the direst of circumstances is evil.

Cheers Trev.

[arsaib4]

Thanks for the excellent review, Trev. Yes, it is the subject matter which makes it stand out. And like you said, this isn't just going on in your backyard, the problem exists everywhere. I'm glad you agreed that Kozole handled it well.

I did not realize that I have actually watched it in Cinequest Film Festival in March 2005 until your post. I didn't even realize it was Peru's submission to Oscar this year.

Good. What did you think?

[Chris Knipp]

I'm damn sure that if we're getting this here then the problems in London and some of the major cities must be far worse.That's scary and true.

It's when we're really tested that we know what we're made of. But frrom the drug/addiction analogy, it makes sense to stay away from temptation as much as you can.

[trevor826]

J'accuse.

I must accuse myself of plagiarism, although I didn't re-read arsaib4's comments on Spare Parts till I posted my own, it's very obvious that a certain phrase he used stuck in my mind and is not a phrase I commonly use.

Arsaib4:

especially in the case of a young Macedonian girl, is presented rather matter-of-factly

my post:

human traffiking, which is one mega-sized problem at present; the process is treated very matter of factly

and

girls end up being sold into prostitution, again this is brought up very matter of factly

So, my apologies to arsaib4 but the phrase was perfect as a descriptive for the film.

Cheers Trev.

[arsaib4]

I truly appreciate your post, Trevor. I don't write as well or as proficiently as someone like yourself or Chris, so it's not easy for me to churn out long reviews for every second film I see. But my short takes still contain enough that they can easily be utilized as a base or a starting point by others for their reviews, and this is obviously something which will not be tolerated. Needless to say, I don't have a problem with your reviews, but I just wanted to make that clear.

[arsaib4]

The emerging popularity of German Cinema, at least in the international markets, could perhaps more easily be linked with an actor, rather than a bevy of talented young filmmakers. Daniel Brühl, the star of the breakthrough hit Goodbye Lenin! (2003), has become a much sought after commodity (not unlike Mexican actor Gael García Bernal), and many of his subsequent films, including The Edukators (2004) and Joyeux Noël (2005), have received the sort of attention that they probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Brühl's presence in the breathtakingly beautiful Love in Thoughts (Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken), arguably his best so far, has most likely helped it to reach our shores, though without much attention. Directed by Achim von Borries, the film starts off as a whodunit as we watch a young man (Brühl) being interrogated by the police about his involvement in a suicide case. But then it slowly materializes as something quite unique: a sexually charged, yet unabashedly poetic story about requited love and its tragic implications. Paul, the aforementioned detainee who happens to be a gifted poet, narrates the proceedings which, set in 1927, mostly unfold over a weekend at the summer cottage belonging to the bourgeois parents of his best friend Günther (August Diehl) and his beautiful, bohemian sister Hilde (Anna Maria Mühe). As these "dreamers" succumb to their beauteous surroundings, so does Borries’ camera with Malick-esque naturalism, requiring every streak of light and sound to exude sensuality amid threatening to unbalance the emotional equilibrium. The trio are eventually joined by their friends from Berlin, setting up the stage for a party sequence which should draw comparisons with one from Assayas’ L’Eau froide (1994). The constantly shifting dynamics, as someone else enters the picture claiming loyalties from both Günther and Hilde, are beautifully played out in an environment which turns out to be at once both vast and claustrophobic. Love in Thoughts is based on a true story (reportedly a notorious one), which is bound to heighten one’s attention to certain details, so perhaps it would’ve been better off as being timeless, much like love.


Grade: B+
________________________

*LOVE IN THOUGHTS premiered at the 2004 Sundance film festival before playing at the Berlin fest. The film didn't receive theatrical distribution in the U.S., but it's now available on DVD (http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000AM6ODK.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg) from Wolfe Video.

[Chris Knipp]

Love in Thoughts---sounds great; I like Brühl, look forward to seeing it. Where did you see it?

Movies seen since The Boys of Baraka:

Transamerica (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1613)
The Chronicles of Narnia
The White Countess

[arsaib4]

I watched Love in Thoughts on DVD.

Transamerica sounds interesting; not so sure about Narnia.

[Chris Knipp]

If you see Narnia, it must be in a nice big auditorium like a cineplex. It's good but not as good as LOTR>

[wpqx]

The Big House (1930)

Damn interesting prison film, much more violent than you would expect from classic Hollywood because it pre-dates the code. Also worth seeing how young Robert Montgomery looked. Arguably Wallace Beery's best performance ever as machine gun Butch. The film was nominated for several Oscars during the third award ceremony, including Best Picture and one for Beery. Beery would win two years later for the much inferior The Champ.

Grade A-

The Wicker Man (1974)

Well cult films are a plentiful, and this one screams "product of it's time" like few others. A modern look at paganism, this film makes Christianity seem so boring. A part comic horror film with a dash of strange musical numbers and random insanity. It is a film to watch while on drugs, and plenty were passed around while this was playing. I have heard news of it being remade with Nicholas Cage as the inspector and Christ I hope they burn the negative before it ever gets released. The Wicker Man has a notorious production history, and like nearly all cult films was drastically shortened. The version now available claims to be the full cut, and although the film might not be a cult masterpiece like some may claim, it is well worth checking out.

Grade B

Hearts and Minds (1974)

One of the best documentaries ever made, this takes a look at the then still fresh topic of Vietnam from nearly every aspect. The images are extremely graphic, and the interview style is something entirely new in documentaries. Peter Davis captures people in the strangest situations, interviewing soldiers while with prostitues, paralyzed veterans, and military minds. Davis also has plenty of humor to go around, although of a certainly dark and black nature.

Grade A+

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

After the success of Laura (1944), Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, and Otto Preminger teamed up to make this brilliantly crafted noir gem. The film resonates hard with me, as its focal point is not so much a murder, or an investigation, but the hate one man has for crime, and the ultimate fear that he'll wind up just like his hoodlum father. Much more depth than one might expect, but well with in the means of noir, thanks to a brilliant script by Ben Hecht, this film manages to make turns without going to ridiculous suspense heights. It was made before Preminger became the defiant antagonist to the Hollywood censors so the content pretty much plays it straight, but there are a few more punches thrown than the average film.

Grade A-

And I saw the White Countess, but that has it's own thread here.

[Chris Knipp]

Claire Denis: L'Intrus/The Intruder (2004) (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1618)

Terrence Malick: The New World (2005) (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1617)

Lasse Hallström: Casanova (2005)

[arsaib4]

Among the new wide-releases, I've seen Munich and King Kong. I will review the former so I haven't fully read what has been written about it here. Will add a few notes on the latter.

[wpqx]

I went a little overboard with my King Kong review. Some movies just get me going and I can't seem to shut up about them. Gonna make an attempt to see the rather poorly reviewed Memoirs of a Geisha tonight, so I'll report back with my verdict.

[wpqx]

I thought there was a thread for this, but oh well.

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

Holy snore fest Batman. This much hyped monstrosity is painfully long and drastically slow paced. The cast is a bunch of Chinese actors, speaking English, playing Japanese women. Hollywood trickery at it's finest, but hey us Westerners can't tell the difference anyways right?

Hard to imagine the man responsible for the extremely fast paced Chicago was supervising this debaucle. He did keep an eye for color, and slightly for choreography, but all else is lost. The imagination of Chicago (which I still found to be a flawed and overrated film) is gone. In it's place is a dreadfull pace that doesn't remind one of the joys of that musical, but rather how much superior so many authentic stories of geishas were from Japan.

Grade C -

[Chris Knipp]

Maybe there should be a Geisha thread, since it seems to be under discussion as one of the end-of-year heavies, with some awards and nominations:

Golden Globes, USA
Nominated:
--Best Original Score - Motion Picture
John Williams
-Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama
Ziyi Zhang


National Board of Review, USA
Won :
--Best Supporting Actress
Li Gong


Satellite Awards
Won:
--Outstanding Screenplay, Adapted
Robin Swicord

Nominated:Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
Ziyi Zhang

Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role, Drama
Li Gong-

--Outstanding Art Direction & Production Design
John Myhre

--Outstanding Cinematography
Robert Elswit

--Outstanding Costume Design
Colleen Atwood

--Outstanding Director
Rob Marshall
--Outstanding Motion Picture, Drama

Outstanding Original Score
John Williams

That's what it says. I'm not questioning what you say, I would tend to think you're right from what I've heard.

[wpqx]

Ponette (1996) - Jacqued Dillon

A moving story about a young girl (Ponette) and her coping with the death of her mother. Along the way she meets some sympathetic people, and some rather cruel children all on the way to recovering. A beautiful movie, with a rather remarkable performance from it's young lead.

[arsaib4]

Ponette may not be Doillon's best, but it's certainly his most widely seen film. The performance from the young girl is indeed remarkable.

Raja and Petits frères are the only other Doillon films available here. (Do watch the former if you get a chance.)

[Chris Knipp]

Have long avoided this because a French-speaking friend characterized it as weepy and sentiimental. Maybe i ought to see it. Too bad more Doillon films aren't avail. here--maybe another one to look for abroad.

[wpqx]

House on 92nd Street (1945) - Henry Hathaway

Well nothing in this film really qualifies as noir, but it got lumped into that undefined category with so many other early post war films. The picture plays much like Hathaway's follow up, 13 Rue Madeline. It is much more of a behind the scenes WWII film. Hathaway didn't seem to be the go to guy for combat pictures, but this type of picture worked for him.

The plot is simple enough. The US has atomic secrets being stolen, and they need to find out who done it before the Germans get the information, so with a few spies set up and a lot of FBI praise, they plant a man and hatch a plot to make everything work in their favor. There is moderate suspense, but Hathaway can't seem to hold anyone in that mood. I've always thought of the man as a rather poor director, a guy to go to when much more skilled auteur's were unavailable. His second rate skills may seem ideal for this picture dripping with B movie mentality, but instead it's just weak filmmaking. I have two more Hathaway films in my pile ready to watch, hopefully some of them are actually noir like their titles suggest.

The House of the title is a five story place in Manhattan where the Germans are running their little spy ring. They are all kept under a tight watch and they all answer to a mysterious man who no one meets named Christopher. The FBI's counteragent arouses suspicion when his credentials get altered by the FBI. He is out to find this Christopher, but it isn't that easy. In the process comes a lot of treachery, and of course US prevails.

It is somewhat joyous to see the good old USA triumph, much as it probably was at the time. House was actually a fairly popular film in its day, despite having C-Level actors as leads. Fox was either trying to make a new group of stars, or just wanted to keep the costs down. The subject of this was certainly timely, considering the film was released only months after the first atomic bomb dropped. The picture starts by saying that the film wouldn't have been able to have been made until the bomb was dropped, a fact that isn't much of a fact but used to make viewers find the film a little more important than it really is. The introduction is very similar to Fred Zinnemann's post war film The Search. Beginning with narration and a ton of stock footage. Hathaway uses new footage shot amongst this to give the impression that his actors and stars actually are/were part of the FBI. The documentary nature is virtually abandoned afterwards, but of course helps to tidy things up at the end.

The film is niether noir, suspenseful, or really captivating. It is decent, and there is a general desire to root for the good guys here, but it's second rate filmmaking at best. Coming off of some rather surprise masterpieces like Somewhere in the Night and Where the Sidewalk Ends, this film is clearly second rate, despite being much better known and generally much better respected.

Grade C+

[wpqx]

Hell in the Pacific (1968) - John Boorman

This film today seems like a gimmick, and something tells me it did in 1968. The Vietnam War was raging, and of course someone had to humanize war. So why not cast two top notch action stars and no one else? I admired how Boorman made Mifune's dialogue unsubtitled. This gives us the perspective of Lee Marvin's marooned soldier and ads a degree of realism. We never know more than any individual character.

This came right after Boorman's remarkably brilliant Point Blank, and this doesn't really measure up. There is only one brief moment where the temporal fun of Point Blank is brought here, when both men envision killing the other, or rather being killed. Aside from that the tale is rather straight forward, to a boring extent. There doesn't seem to be anything different here, and the early tension between the two evaporates quickly and we're left with a formulaic and kind of drab film.

Grade B

[arsaib4]

Boorman has a tendency to do what you just described: "pseudo-political" films like Beyond Rangoon and Country of My Skull are even worse than Pacific for many of the same reasons. But he can still come up with the likes of The General or the underrated Where the Heart is, so he can't totally be ignored.

[oscar jubis]

It's not a great film but I plan to watch it again if only because it was lensed by Conrad Hall, which always meant great cinematography. Hall was nominated for Oscar ten times and won three. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "of course someone had to humanize the war".

[wpqx]

There just seemed like a tendancy to make a humanistic war film especially during the Vietnam War as a social commentary and some sort of hippy crap like we're all god's children.

[Chris Knipp]

Obviously Boorman did a lot of different kinds of movies an he is uneven. Doesn't anybody love The Emerald Forest? I do. But I haven't seen it for a while.

[wpqx]

Whirlpool (1949) - Otto Preminger

Another in a string of Fox Film Noirs, this one features fantastic performances from Jose Ferrer and Gene Tierney but lacks a little overall.

Signs of Life (1968) - Werner Herzog

Early film from the German master, this is amateur filmmaking with inspired moments of greatness.

[Chris Knipp]

RIchard Shepard: The Matador (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1626)

[wpqx]

The Ringer (2005)

Bad, just plain bad. After several dates where I picked the movie, I conceded this one, hoping that I'd at least get a laugh, and I did. Exactly one laugh amidst this god awful nonsense. The crowd was rather young, the night before they all had to return to high school. I heard some people laugh, and a few people comment "fucking retards". They may try to make us laugh with them, but this film is relying on the basic assumption that the mentally retarded are funny just because of that, and it's even funnier when they try and act like "normal people". Fuck this movie.

[Chris Knipp]

arsaib-Ballets Russes--Saw it. It's very interesting. Though I had gone to performances as a child, I didn't know that there were two "Ballets Russes" or what the split was about etc., and this clarified that. The aging dancers are indeed charming. It's not a film celebrating dance -- I mean, you don't get a lot of extended dance footage, or detailed information about dance styles, choreography, etc., -- but a history of the (two) Ballets Russes, but that's an important topic and the history is presented in detail..

wpqx-The Ringer. Please, wpqx, try to keep your comments on a more respectful, decent level, respectful of us, and yourself. You don't give the topic or the filmmaker, so your comment is pretty much useless, frankly. Even if the movie is tasteless, you don't have to descend to its level.

[wpqx]

There's nothing respectful to say about the Ringer, just god awful predictable nonsense.

I did manage to see Good Men, Good Women (1995) from Hou Hsaio-Hsien. I'm not going to bother comparing, but this was certainly a refreshing film, continuing the theme of the modern history of Taiwan. Although this film jumps back and forth with the present, and makes for a rather remarkable viewing. Hou makes a case for being the best filmmaker of the 90s, and this film is certainly evidence to help support that claim.

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
arsaib-Ballets Russes--Saw it. It's very interesting. Though I had gone to performances as a child, I didn't know that there were two "Ballets Russes" or what the split was about etc., and this clarified that. The aging dancers are indeed charming. It's not a film celebrating dance -- I mean, you don't get a lot of extended dance footage, or detailed information about dance styles, choreography, etc., -- but a history of the (two) Ballets Russes, but that's an important topic and the history is presented in detail..

I was hoping that you had seen this. I knew about the troupes but certainly wasn't aware of their history and all the accomplishments in detail. Was also surprised to learn the influence they had on other art forms. Yeah, it was more about the people, many of whom probably haven't had a chance in quite some time to talk about their past. They seemed healthy and energized. Do you remember any specific details from the performances you saw?

[wpqx]

The Dark Corner (1946) - Henry Hathaway

Well finally a Hathaway film that actually is a film noir. This story has all the right formulas, a somewhat shady private detective, an even shadier past, a murder, a cover up, and even a dame or two. This seems to follow in a general trend of Fox film noir of not having the female be an antagonist. Lucille Ball plays the secretary here, and is an anchor, support, and companion for our hero, not the reason for his misery. She seems to fall right in line with the "female as crutch" roles given out in many of this studios film noirs, most typically Where the Sidewalk Ends, but Gene Tierney was slightly more motivating in that.

The film is shrouded in darkness, and that is of course the biggest characteristic of noir. Joe MacDonald (a Fox regular for years) did the cinematography, and in many scenes, particularly in Brad's (Mark Stevens) office the look is absolutely perfect. MacDonald wound up with a trio of best cinematography nominations, but won none.

Mark Stevens may not be a name in the noir genre, but he does a damn good job here. His character recalls a little of the reckless violent screenwriter of Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place. Mark doesn't seem to be able to function without at least a little drink. Not sure how intentional his drinking is, but later in the film when he's asked for a drink he says "Never touch the stuff", we know that there was a dependency. In that scene Mark has finally figured things out, put two and two together, and can now make his move without being loaded on sauce.

Lucille Ball got the top billing, even though she is more of a support for Stevens, but well she was the "Queen of the B's" at this point. One of her few non-comedic roles, she still manages to get most of the few laughs, and there's a slight chuckle to be had watching her bat. She's charming here and is never too far behind her man, and as Stevens' Brad gives up at nearly every corner, Ball's Kathleen is quick with an idea, even if it's a bad one.

Aside from a few brilliantly constructed night time shots, there is hardly anything here of overwhelming value. This was film noir by the books, and it touches all plot points necessary. The plot works, although not in an overly compelling way. Clifton Webb plays a bit of a villian again, and his character is so obsessively smart that it makes him a downright awesome noir villian. You should have suspected it, after seeing his rather young wife (Cathi Downs). Hollywood's way of saying dating an older man is fine, just be careful. Ironic when Mari (Downs) blows off thinking that the man she's having an affair with is too young to be intimate with the old Constance Collier, an actress as old proportionately to her on screen husband.

The Dark Corner remains a damn good film noir. Not among the all time best, but certainly a text book case. And from what I've seen the pick of the litter regarding the somewhat lackluster filmography of Henry Hathaway.

Grade B+

[Chris Knipp]

Match Point (see thread)

[arsaib4]

Winner of the Camera d’Or ("Best First Film") and the Critics’ Week prize at 2004 Cannes film festival, Israeli filmmaker Keren Yedaya's Or (My Treasure) (Mon trésor) paints a gritty and uncompromising portrait of a mother-daughter relationship through which it ultimately points toward pertinent issues facing the society at large. Set in an unsavory part of Tel Aviv, the film concerns a hard-working 17-year-old Or (Dana Ivgi, from Broken Wings [2002]) and her immature prostitute mother Ruthie (Ronit Elkabetz, from Late Marriage [2001]) who is recovering from her latest bout with drug addiction. Or is desperate to find another line of work for her mother, also addicted to her profession but less for monetary reasons than to fulfill her desire for affection. But the teenager doesn’t quite realize that her own nightly heavy-petting sessions with neighborhood boys serve the same purpose for her. Yedaya’s long, stationary shots are at once intimate and distant to this grim reality, forcing the viewers to interpret the complexity of her protagonists and their decisions. Her images often dismember the characters, not only stressing their fractured lives, but in Ruthie’s case also accentuating the scars of her rapidly decaying flesh (the filmmaker then contrasts this aesthetical choice with a bold, seemingly never-ending shot of Or’s nubile body in a shower). While Or (My Treasure) doesn’t hesitate to capture the banality of life in all of its glory, the film’s specificity with moments strong enough to unravel it is quite unique and powerful. From Or internally questioning her self-worth after the decision of her lover’s mother to ultimately staring at Ruthie and finding someone quite different, Yedaya measures her descent to be perceptible enough to ultimately unleash an accusatory gaze, one which is perhaps also filled with shame.

Grade: A-
__________________________

*After premiering at Cannes, OR (MY TREASURE) went onto play at festivals such as Vancouver, New York, and London. The film was released theatrically in the U.S. by Kino International and it is now available on DVD (http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000BLBZFW.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg).

[Chris Knipp]

Have not seen it; is it newly out on dvd? Reviewing (http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/movies/05or.html?ex=1136869200&en=9e8e8c42bfcca29e&ei=5070) this film in October 2004 at the time of its NYFF showing Manohla Dargis called it "well-meaning but irritatingly naïve" and a "feel-bad drama" that did well because "grim is always big at film festivals." She says " Ms. Yedaya's take on prostitution would be tolerable if her characters, especially Ruthie, weren't such ideological constructs." Your comments?

[arsaib4]

As you know, I usually prefer not to negatively comment on what a certain critic has said, partly because he or she isn’t here to respond to it, but mainly due to the fact that the conversation then often simply becomes a medley of quotes and interpretations. But in this case, I’ll first add what director Keren Yedaya had to say about Dargis's remarks: "One thing to understand about Dargis is that she is actually coming from this field of study, and she holds an oppositional approach to mine, claiming that prostitution has to do with the freedom to choose. Since she is all for legalizing prostitution, I think she sees me as her enemy. Therefore, I truly believe that the attack on me here was both political and personal. Although I usually don’t have a problem accepting negative criticism about the film, I found the review to be really insulting."

Now that I’ve read Dargis’s review more carefully, I think there’s some truth to what Yedaya had said. Her comment regarding the characters being ideological constructs is actually irritatingly naïve. Are the filmmakers not allowed to mold their characters around their beliefs? But while critics shouldn’t repress their own ideologies while viewing a work, they have certain responsibilities to their readers that they must also attend to. Dargis has a strong personality, and that’s one of the reason why I do like her, but in this case she her allowed her own views to get the better of her. (She also ended up mentioning the word "melodramatic” in her review for a film which adheres to Dardennes’ naturalism.) And while it’s true that a woman’s "desire" is perhaps not explored enough by filmmakers, it might not be one the main reasons why a prostitute’s offspring ends up in the same line of work. The film's approach is anything but didactic; it actually confronts the viewers with a few humanistic questions. As I mentioned earlier, it is now out on DVD and I hope that people get a chance to watch it.

[Chris Knipp]

Good answer. Thank you. I can't comment myself since I haven't seen the film.

[wpqx]

Goodbye South Goodbye (1996) - Hou Hsiao Hsien

A rapid departure from Hsiao's previous Good Men Good Women, this is more akin to Liang's Rebels of the Neon God than typical Hsiao. The joy is that this director could stretch, and his next film, the masterful Flowers of Shanghai, is nothing like this. Similar things abound such as the long shots, but tone and theme are remarkably different. The camera becomes more subjective here. Sure much of it is still in long shot and observational, but there are many more POV shots than one might suspect, and the camera is much more mobile this time around.

Goodbye is what one may consider Hsiao's gangster film. Sure this deals with part time thugs, but it's not an ultra violent gore fest most commonly associated with Hong Kong action films. Instead it is more of a social critique. As one luckless gangster seems to do just worse and worse all because he was trying to come up in the world. Not quite the rise to power films that are commonly associated with the genre. In fact the film takes on a bit of a black comedy undertone, because Kao and Flathead are just so damn unfortunate.

The film was selected by more than one source as one of the ten best films of the 90s. That praise is exceptionally high, and I much disagree. It is however a welcome departure for Hsiao, and a film that is infinitely masterful. Another viewing would no doubt enable me much further understanding, but on first impression it is quite a remarkable film, but let's not go overboard.

Grade A -

[Chris Knipp]

This was my first Hou movie. It seemed rather dissultory and strange to me, but I could see here was a unique style. As I said for Three Times, I don't think Hou always hits it, but when he does, he's amazing. I would probably agree with your evaluation; fine, but not the best. Still you must rate him higher than most to give it an A-.

[wpqx]

I thought it was damn good, just not quite perfect, I'm comparing it perhaps unfairly to Flowers of Shanghai which I believe is his masterpiece (of the six films I've seen).

Shine (1996) - Scott Hicks

Well, well I once remarked that I'll see every film nominated for a best picture Oscar, so this film that I should have seen four years ago at least took me awhile. It doubles up for me covering a best actor Oscar winner as well, which means I've seen the last 30 winners of that award, a pointless streak, but we need incriments. This film shouldn't have seemed like a chore though. I found 1996 to be arguably the weakest year in feature films in the last 20+ years. I'm always interested to discover perhaps a hidden gem, something I haven't yet seen, but Shine wasn't that. Instead it was a by the book, predictable, and extremely cliche film made for the sole purpose of winning awards.

How many times have you seen a film around Oscar time about a troubled genius, mental illness, a strict disapproving father, redemption in later life through love, and squandered talent? Well hell look at every year's best picture nominees and it's quite possible there's a film there that fits all the above. Shine just makes up for it because Fargo avoided those cliches I guess. Geoffrey Rush is admirable in his role here, and brings some humor to the troubled part, but I never believe it's anything more than a gimmick role. Acting shouldn't be about developing a speech pattern, pretending to be crazy, but about conveying real emotion, and I don't really think Rush does that here. Noah Taylor, who plays the younger David does that, and his screen time is even greater than Rush's so perhaps the wrong man got the Oscar here. Neither really deserved it, but perhaps in a supporting category they could have been honored.

I can't help but cringe at some of these films. Seeing the stern father storm about in the beginning of the film I knew where this film was heading, I just prayed that this would be different. Something told me to remain optimistic, maybe this filmwouldn't go down the same roads that so many other triumph in the face of adversity pics do. Unfortunately it wasn't different, the same thing, and the tone of the film from the first fifteen minutes prevaded throughout. I do think that Rush's appearance helped make the film a little lighter, and you can't help but laugh at some of the things he does, such as jumping on a trampoline in an open trenchcoat with nothing on underneath, but these few flashes of humor aren't enough to sustain the film.

Grade C -

[Chris Knipp]

Absolutely. I found Shine very, very annoying. I ractually made me angry; I was seething for days. It was fake and manipulative. And it has all those clichés you mention. An Oscar trap, like a fly trap.

Agreed The Flowers of Shanghai is way better than the Boys... But I have not seen all Hou's output yet. It's not all available on Netflix.

[wpqx]

Distant (2002)

Well my introduction to Turkish film was a good one. It's pace is set up early in extreme long shot. The film has a deliberately slow pace that suits it just fine. It never really ventures into satire, predictability or pathos, so for my money intelligent filmmaking all around.

Grade A -

[Chris Knipp]

Don't remember reading about this directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan but www.metacritic.com indicates a 84, and very high praise from Hoberman, Lane, et al.

[wpqx]

It came out here about two years ago.

I finally got to watch Gerry (2002), kind of went about Van Sant's Trilogy in mixed order, but well they aren't exactly related plot wise so I think I'm safe. Gerry stands out as the most minimal of the films and the most evocative. There is no plot to speak of, but I felt reminded of the journey in Walkabout. Just a lot of open landscapes and wide wide shots. I'm gonna give the film another day or two to sink in before I go rating it or expanding further, because Elephant and Last Days both required deliberation.

[Chris Knipp]

Gerry especially benefits from viewing on a big theatrical screen. But also Last Days. I think Elephant wouldn't need that as much, though I did see it in a theater.

[Chris Knipp]

Claude Chabrol 1985: Le Cri du Hibou (The Cry of the Owl). (Back to Netflix dvd's after a hiatus.)

This is pleasant enough to watch but it seems to me to meander and lack momentum -- to be another example of why sometimes I'm not sure if I really like Chabrol or not, though clearly he is fine when he's fine. This is also based upon a Patricia Highsmith story; and being a big Highsmith fan i felt, as often happens, that her sense of menace and compulsive intensity were lost.

[arsaib4]

I liked Distant but not as much as others did. It seemed slightly derivative of the techniques employed by the likes of Kiarostami, Tsai, etc.

Haven't seen Chabrol's Le Cri du Hibou; didn't know it existed on DVD. Thanks.

[Chris Knipp]

Just running through all the French films on Netflix for the past decades.

[wpqx]

All or Nothing (2002) - Mike Leigh

For some reason I avoided this film. I missed it when it was out, and never bothered to pick it up on DVD. I can't honestly understand for the life of me why. All or Nothing is the best film I've seen in a long time, and it is leading me to believe that 2002 was one of the most fantastic years in all of film. I'm no expert on Leigh, but I seriously wonder whether or not he has a film better than this.

The whole film is washed in depression. Every character is miserable, and those that aren't obviously depressed are openly angry. The language of the kids in the film is such that I seriously wonder what parent would tolerate it. You see that one is a vacant alcoholic, another is just beaten by the world, and the last is somewhat overjoyed. Maureen seems to be the only character cheerful. I wondered at first if it was just a front. Someone that smiles on the outside, but is as beaten as everyone else on the inside. As the film progressed though, I found her to be the only character that had any sort of base. She was level headed throughout, knew what to do, and never really seemed to be discouraged. She was the one in the apartment complex always willing to help, but no one seemed to want it. We find eventually that her help is needed, first from her reluctant daughter and then from Penny and her son.

As usual the cast is full of hardly recognizable but top notch actors. Timothy Spall is the only recognizable face and if his name isn't familiar he was in the Harry Potter series. He is very far from an attractive man, and isn't someone you'd expect for a lead. In the role he is absolutely astonishing. First as the depressed and silent victim, but when he does get to open up, it is among the most moving scenes in any film.

I really want to expand on this, but alas my time for writing is brief, but damn this was one amazing movie.

Grade A

[Chris Knipp]

I agree, excellent film. Why do you think that year was one of the best of all time though?

[wpqx]

Well 2002 I found an extremely strong year. Any year where there are more than 10 films I'd rate at 5 stars is one to note. I believe the total is 12 or 13 for 2002, which makes it high, but it is the particular films. I thought the Two Towers was the best of the LOTR series, Talk to Her is my favorite Almodovar film, The Pianist was my film of the year, Spirited Away I thought was the best Miyazaki, Bowling for Columbine I found far better than Fahrenheit or Roger and Me, I enjoyed both of Spielberg's movies that year, thought Adaptaion was one of the most original and intriguing films of the year, and there were just several other damn good movies. Among those I'd recently add to the great list would be Gerry and All or Nothing.

[Chris Knipp]

Have you contributed your best lists for 2005 on the Top Ten thread yet?

[arsaib4]

I agree that 2002 was a great year in film. I haven't actually posted an official list yet for that year, but I know that you're missing Sokurov's Russian Ark, Cantet's Time Out, Oliveira's I'm Going Home, Koshashvili Late Marriage, Tsai's What Time is it There?, among others. A great year, indeed.

[Chris Knipp]

Blood Simple. Coen brothers. 1984. rental dvd.

It looks a lot different after these years and all the other Coen movies. I'm afraid I don't like it as much as I did then, when it seemed so cool and fresh. Now I see the condescension toward rustic, rural types and the cold nihilism that you get in some of the later movies, without the depth of character development found in Great Lebowski, Barton Fink, and others. There are edgy, tongue-in-cheek thrills, and I like the Highsmith-esque clumsy burial, but it seems pointless now, though cinematic and obviously full of talent.

[arsaib4]

Eric Rohmer's Triple Agent (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=7428#post7428) (now available on DVD in the U.S.)

Peter Jackson's King Kong (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=14352#post14352) (2005)

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
The story fizzles away... but it's told with such tact and style that one walks out curiously satisfied.

If the subject matter is a bit thin, the style is such a delight that it doesn't matter, and the themes of loneliness, dress, possession, and money (relevant to our last century and to Japan's postwar history and perhaps to all human experience) are thought-provoking enough to make the minimalist content expand in the mind. A quiet, subtle, delightful film.

That's about right, althought I'm not sure what exactly prompted you to use the word "delightful." The film is spare and dreamy, and it is also decidedly mournful, perhaps overly so. You're right about the style -- very elegant, indeed. The story "fizzles away," and after reading Haruki Murakami's short story, I wonder if the film would've been better off as a short (about 30-40 mins. instead of 75).

[Chris Knipp]

Well if it's spare and elegant that can be a delight, that's all. But it is slight and I didn't remember it at the end-of-the-year list-making time.

[Chris Knipp]

Patrice Chereau's Intimacy (2001)

A lot can be said about this, which must have been shown in San Francisco very briefly so I missed it though I saw a newspaper review that was good and very admiring. It's fun to mull over watching this at home stopping and starting it and doing other things in between. The photography, which evokes Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud at times, is beautiiful, and the loud sound track with sound effects and music is interesting. The blending of French sexual frankness with seemingly improvisatory dialogue and Mike Leigh situations (and Leigh regular, the always strong Timothy Spall, not to mention the Globe theater director Mark Rydell in the main role; imagine the irony of the latter refusing to give an opinon to Spall of his wife's performance in The Glass Menagerie saying, "I don't know; I'm not into the theater at all") -- the mixture does and doesn't work. The film demands to be taken seriously, but doesn't resolve structurally or have anything definite to say about its situations and people, which are based on a couple of Hanif Kuraishi stories. The explicit sex scenes which the disapproving David Walsh of the World Socialist Web Site says are a "third" of the movie (it may have see4med that way to him, but surely it's less than a tenth of actual screen time) made people alternatively think this was terribly serious and profound, or dismiss it as pure crap. I'd say they just add to the rich mix, but a mix so rich that it never quite all comes together. I keep coming back to some of the images though, which as an artist I find deeply satisfying in themselves, and on my good dvd playder (now working again) and sound system the sound track is arresting and fresh. A divorced man in London with a couple small children who once was a musician and now works in a small Soho pub has quick sex one Wednesday at the spare flat where he now lives with a middle aged woman. She keeps coming back on subsequent Wednesdays and eventually he meets her cabbie husband and finds out about her life as a mediocre actress. He follows her and then the anonymous sex relationship begins to unravel, because things get too complicated. Definitely worth watching, and another interesting addition to the complex Patrice Chéreau oeuvre.

[Chris Knipp]

Matthieu Kassovitz: Métisse (AKA Cafe au lait), 1993

A Jewish bike messenger (Kassovitz) competes with a rich African diplomat's son (Hubert Koundé) for the affections of a beautiful mulatto girl (Julie Mauduech) who has gotten pregnant -- by one of the two, she won't say which -- while they take care of her and squabble with each other in a menage a trois in which race and other issues are frankly but amusingly dealt with. This light French knockoff of SHe's Gotta Have It is Kassovit's first feature directorial effort and he also co-stars in it as the Spike Lee character. It's full of fun -- no use going into much depth about it. The q uestion is, how did Kassovitz get from this to La Haine/Hate in just a couple of years? And to Les rivieres pourpres five years later, and to Gothika in 11 years, and has he maintained his promise as a director, or just become a serviceable actor, as he is seen to be -- still rellatively the comic lightweight -- as the 'toy maker' in Spielberg's Munich?

[Chris Knipp]

The Crook/Le voyou (1970) by Claude Lelouch starring Jean-Louis Tritignant, Danièle Delorme

On the loose again after escaping from prison, Tritignant, known as “the Swiss” for his precision and his habit of working alone (?) is a suave criminal who avoids capture and carries out a successful kidnapping (in which he does not at all work alone but has three or four accomplices). The film has a bright look and a pleasing sense of watching a smooth, gentlemanly crook at work, though there is never any sense of danger, and comparisons with Tarantino seem very wide of the mark. The action has momentum and charm, but things become a bit confusing due to oddly placed flashbacks. There is a focus on the role of publicity and media involvement in kidnappings, which allows the “crook” to successfully blackmail a bank for a million dollars, and features a gullible couple who give up their small boy becuse they think they've won a Simca car. We're suckered by ads, Lelouch is saying, and look what it can come to. Charles Denner of Elevator to the Scaffold and Life Inside Out/La vie à l’envers is effective and strange, if not real, as a minor bank official. A typical Lelouch touch is bookending the film with a musical film-within-the-film called “The Crook”[Le voyou] and it is all very amusing and light, but somehow it leaves you flat, and the main event, the kidnapping, cheats the audience: we aren’t told the setup.

[wpqx]

Mother (1952) - Mikio Naruse

Being unable to catch any of the Naruse retrospective at the Gene Siskel Film Center, I was relegated to checking him out on prehistoric VHS. Only three of his films were ever released in the US, and this is the earliest (and only one at the video store). The comparisons to Ozu are completely warranted. The suburban atmosphere is eerily similar. In fact it seems as though this film was shot on the same sets as Ozu films, particularly Ohayu. The film is simple in it's family story, and recalls a little of the American I Remember Mama, although not quite as nostalgic. This film focuses much more strongly on the direct and indirect impact that the war had on the average Japanese citizen. In it's own way commenting on the post war situation as so many more bleak Italian films did.

[wpqx]

The Cloud Capped Star (1960) - Ritwik Ghatak

Well my first non-Ray Indian film, this one seems much in the same style. Which is to say it isn't a four hour Bollywood musical. That said it isn't anywhere near as good as a Ray film might have been. Again it's story is about country folk trying to get by, but something about the film seems tired, as if we've already seen it a hundred times, and we have. The style of the film is admirable, lots of great deep focus compositions, but generally speaking it's been done before, and done better. Overly pessimistic and depressing, but not in a compelling way.

[Chris Knipp]

Alexandra Leclère: Soeurs fâchées, Les (2004) [DVD bought in Paris.]

Comedy about reunion of "angry sisters" (the title calls them) with a good cast headed by Catherine Frot and Isabelle Huppert as the sisters and François Berléand as Huppert's husband. Another humorous study of French bourgeois spoiledness and grumpiness. Louise ( Frot, who is good at playing sympathetic but ditzy ladies) is the country sister; Marthe (Huppert) is the elegant Parisian one. Louise comes to visit and see a publisher about a novel that's been accepted and her behavior (to Marthe) seens to be nothing but a string of gushy faux pas. But it's Marthe who turns out to be shrill and annoying. Louise is the one who's happy and successful, and the outwardly sophisticated, elegant Marthe is miserable and doesn't like who she is. This homely paradox is saved from seeming corny because of the wry way bourgeois pretensions are observed. In this regard Leclère's film can be compared with Bacri and Jaoui's acerbic comedies, because it deals with some of the same kinds of people amd peels away some of the same façades. Frot (who was in Un air de famille, which Bacri/Jaoui wrote) emerges as a complex character, and the devastating Huppert as usual doesn't mind playing someone you're impressed by, but really can't possibly like. Both of these actresses are in top form here.

There seems no reason why this wouldn't play well in the US but it may be getting late for a US release. Anyway, according to DVD Times (http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=58711) (UK), which has an excellent discussion, it is out there (where it was also inexplicably not released) in a Region Two DVD, and in a great looking print (which the French one also is, and it also has both French and English subtitles available on the latter).

[wpqx]

The Matador

I'll keep my comments to the thread appropriate.

[Chris Knipp]

Manoel de Oliveira, I'm Going Home/Je rentre à la maison (2001). (Netflix) Touching, low keyed study of an aging actor (played by Michel Piccoli) whose life is seen as a series of small humiliations following a major bereavement. Strong elements in the film: Piccoli's measured assurance; a reliance on concrete, real-time incident, including lengthy passages from Ionesco and Shakespeare. A little too dry and detached for my taste, though I'll have to admit the director Oliveira's being 93 adds creditibility to the portrait of a valitudinarian.

Morgan Jon Fox, Blue Citrus Hearts (2003). DVD from Blockbuster store. Small indie gay coming-of-age movie focused on two high schoolers, not a success.

Lucretia Martel, The Holy Girl/La Niña Santa (2005). DVD from Blockbuster. Amazing, subtle and distinctive. I loved the elliptical, crabwise style of both storytelling and camera placement -- and some of the images are very beautiful, and the young girls are so real you can almost smell them. Helena, the mother, is also very attractive. Had I seen seen this in time I might well have put in in my best list. Howard Schumann has a good review (http://www.talkingpix.co.uk/ReviewsHolyGirl.html) of this elsewhere; it may be on this site too but I couldn't find it.

I'm catching up on the ones that got away last year. Next on my 2005 "Wish I'd Seen List" lined up for viewing: Tropical Malady. Coming up soon on my Netflix queue: Cafe Lumière, My Summer of Love, The World. I'll see Jones's Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada when it's on DVD.

[arsaib4]

Soeurs fâchées, Les: Yes, I liked it too; glad that you picked it up. I also think that it's distributable.

Je rentre à la maison: A graceful effort from an honorable filmmaker. Its final moments are heartbreaking to say the least.

Looking forward to your thoughts on Tropical Malady and the rest.

[Chris Knipp]

One could say lots about Tropical Malady but there's not much I can add to the enthusiastic discussions that have taken place elsewhere. It made a good impression, especially the second "spirit" half, but in several days since I watched it it has faded rapidly. I don't think Weerasethakul is going to be one of my personal favorite filmmakers. The relationship between Keng and Tong is sweet and coy--over time it becomes sweet and cloying. I think the Asians who commented custom might make the younger one acquiesce, without really being gay, could be accurate. Especially if he is poor, he might hope to gain some benefit from the older soldier's interrest, and his familiy might approve for that reason. This exists in some societies. Everyone is smiling in this segment. From the commentary, the director has had this approach before. There's something Utopian about it. It's also quite sexless unless you think a guy putting his head in another guy's lap or licking his hand is a form of sex. I was very impressed with the pursuit of the tiger. The acoustical aspect was unusually rich and I thought the editing was excellent in this part. Certainly an original piece of work but except for the second half it doesn't try to do anything difficult. I watched it twice and watched most of the commentary version too. The outtakes were valuable because they showed Weerasetakul isn't seduced by his own cleverness. He cut out some nifty, impressive shots or scenes, because they would probably have said too much or been too obvious, mostly from the second half. Some of the subtitles aren't very easy to read. This would be better to see in a theater on a large screen: its whole value comes through its rich visual and auditory world. Luckiliy I do have a great sound system.

[Chris Knipp]

arsaib, Isn't there a Rendezvous with French Cinema this year? If so when is it coming? I only see 35th New Directors/ New Films
March 22 through April 2, 2006 listed on the Lincoln Center Film Society site.

[Chris Knipp]

Matthieu Kassovitz: La Haine/Hate (1995) UK DVD ordered from Ireland.

This vérité-style depiction of disaffected youth from the Paris ghetto cités or banlieues, super-relevant after the events of last November, is a classic now, won major prizes at the time, yet isn't available on US DVD. Black and white. With Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui. Vinz (Cassel) expresses the cités' anger and explosive energy; Saïd has a con-man charm, and Hubert has the peacemaker impulse. Together they make a vivid little inter-racial band, Jew, Arab, and black. The Hate in the air comes from the general situation, but specifically one of their mates' being in hospital fighting for his life after a police beating. The action has a desultory quality that makes it seem to drag at times and Cassel's one-note macho posturing can become tiresome. This is like a Bicycle Thief with nothing to hunt for. It has also come to seem relatively tame after things like Seule contre tous and Irréversible. Nonetheless La Haine can really soar at times, as in the final sequence where the guys get high on a Paris rooftop, and "turn off" the Eiffel Tower, but don't wait to see. The billboard message they keep passing, LE MONDE EST À VOUS/THE WORLD IS YOURS is too ironic for words. The ending still feels pretty powerful, Gaspar Noë or no. Contrast: Kechiche's Games of Love and Chance/L'Esquive, last year's French best film choice, which enters the banlieue not as source of statistics but for social comedy.

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
arsaib, Isn't there a Rendezvous with French Cinema this year? If so when is it coming? I only see 35th New Directors/ New Films March 22 through April 2, 2006 listed on the Lincoln Center Film Society site.

Rendezvous usually starts during the second week of March, and it is an annual event. They'll probably release the schedule in a couple of weeks. Right now a Catalan series is going on which will be followed by Film Comment Selects. Any plans?

[arsaib4]

While discussing his provocative new feature Wild Side, French filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz (Come Undone [2000]) recently stated that "I’m drawn to impenetrable characters that operate outside the usual norms. I truly love fringe dwellers and people who don’t fit with fiction’s archetypes." The three main characters in his latest -- Stéphanie (Stéphanie Michelini), a transsexual prostitute; Jamel (Yasmine Belmadi), a bisexual Arab hustler; and Mikhail (Edouard Nikitine), Stephanie’s lover who happens to be an illegal Russian immigrant -- certainly do fit the bill. Early on, Stéphanie is seen living the hard life in Paris with her two men. But the situation changes when she is called by her dying mother to come attend to her. As Stéphanie makes her way towards her rural childhood home, old memories involving her deceased father and sister come flooding in. At this point, Lifshitz, working with the great cinematographer Agnès Godard (most famous for her work with Claire Denis), starts to contrast the dingy realism of his early sequences with poetic, picturesque shots of the French countryside featuring a rollicking young Stéphanie (who was once Pierre). While this allows the director’s artistic sensibilities to thrive, the connection between Stéphanie's past and present remains oblique at best. Ultimately, both Jamel and Mikhail, who were practically lost without the woman, make their way to her for support. Those two also remain "impenetrable" for the most part (the way Lifshitz perhaps wanted them to be) -- they are often seen brooding silently to Jocelyn Pook’s evocative score (a whiff of Patrice Chéreau is hard to miss). What Wild Side establishes quite well, however, are the dynamics of the relationship between the trio. It is also a rare film that refuses to make its characters’ sexuality the main focus. That’s not to say that the film shies away from it (a slow pan of Stephanie’s body is bound to make Catherine Breillat envious), but rather the confrontations are presented in a very practical manner. Liftsitz’s characters may not need others but they do need one another, and that’s the only way they will survive. Wild Side is a film made by and for adults.

Grade: B
______________________

*The film premiered at the Berlin film festival in 2004 (it won a couple of awards there). It was released in the U.S. in June last year by Wellspring, who've now put it out on DVD (http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000AQ68W8.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg).

[Chris Knipp]

Rendezvous usually starts during the second week of March, and it is an annual event. They'll probably release the schedule in a couple of weeks. Right now a Catalan series is going on which will be followed by Film Comment Selects. Any plans?I hope to be there, but can't make plans till I know the dates. I don't see why on their website they don't even mention it. They don't seem to plan ahead very far.

[Chris Knipp]

José Giovanni: Mon père, il m'a sauvé la vie (My father saved my life) (2001) DVD bought in Paris; no subtitles.

This is the true story of writer/director Giovanni, who was condemned to death after a scuffle in which several people died in the Forties. Estranged from his gambler father (Bruno Cremer), the son (Vincent Leœur) does not know for many years that it was the father, known mainly as a card shark, who successfullly strugged to get him a commuted sentence. After release from prison Giovanni begins a long career as a writer and filmmaker with a bestselling book about a prison escape attempt called Le trou/The Hole. Mon père was Giovanni's last film; he died in 2004. The movie, dominated by Cremer, has a cold, monolitihic power and is not without some impressive, touching moments, but it is a deadpan conventional historical drama and critics were unimpressed. I found it slow going. On this DVD there is a testimonial from Bertrand Tavernier, interview with Giovanni, and a commentary.

[cinemabon]

What Wild Side establishes quite well, however, are the dynamics of the relationship between the trio. It is also a rare film that refuses to make its characters’ sexuality the main focus.


I just read the following: Wild Side (France) 2004

The filmmaker shows a gritty, unpleasant side of life while wanting us to believe underneath it all these seriously damaged people are really quite normal to the extent they have a menage a trois which helps them through life. Quite a fantasy, but unfortunately portrayed here as real look of life on the wild side. In sum, no plot, no truth and no real reason to spend much time here.

[arsaib4]

That’s a very interesting comment because it portrays the mindset of most viewers while they’re watching a film like Wild Side. I think in most cases when we see trans/homosexual characters, we have a tendency to assume that they must be damaged in some way, which is exactly what this person has done. In fact, Lifshitz (the director) almost teases us with a few backstories, as if he was trying to make a point. Still, though, I would’ve liked a bit more depth.

The individuals portrayed here are quite normal (why wouldn’t they be?), but thankfully this isn’t belabored. They’re simply trying to figure out how and where they fit into society. Yet, at the same time, the film doesn’t present itself as a social critique. While its poetic, elliptical nature might make it seem so, it ain’t no "fantasy." A unique film for sure, one which also doesn’t really have a target audience.

I'd be interested in your comments if you get a chance to watch it.

[Chris Knipp]

I will put Wild Side on my Netfilx list, though Presque rien/Come Undone left little impression on me. Despite its seriousness, it seemed rather slight.

Also, arsaib, have you seen Mon père, il m'a sauvé la vie?

[Chris Knipp]

Jim Hanon: The End of the Spear (2006) (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1660) In theaters now. But not recommended!

[arsaib4]

Also, arsaib, have you seen Mon père, il m'a sauvé la vie?
No, I haven't seen this one. Actually, I wasn't even aware of it until you brought it up. Is it worth tracking down?

None of the mainstream releases from 2006 have attracted my interest so far. Perhaps Tristan + Isolde is agreeable, I'm not sure, but certainly I'm in no hurry to watch it.

[Chris Knipp]

No point in tracking Mon père down, really, unless the topic interests you. And no good new films in theaters. I saw Tristan and Isolde. It's a pretty couple, that's for sure, and they spent some money on the costumes and sets, but it's just not very interesting, and I don't think it really has that much to do with the original legend either. Now James Franco is out with another movie that sounds like a clinker -- Annapolis, which wasn't even made in Annapolis, but in Pennsylvania, due to a conflict with the Naval Academy over the story, which the Academy now reportedly regrets, since they lost the chance to get some publicity.

[arsaib4]

I think Franco is a pretty good actor -- I liked him in the TV series "Freaks and Geeks" and in one film with De Niro (can't remember the title) -- but he's mostly been relegated to B-grade stuff.

[Chris Knipp]

Franco has both looks and acting talent, but it's true he has not gotten any great roles. I am going to rent Freaks and Geeks and also James Dean to see how he is in those. People hated Sonny, but I found it had a certain weird charm. He has even directed h imself in two movies lately, but nothing seems to hit the big time.

[Chris Knipp]

Joseph Losey: La Truite/The Trout (1982) Netflix DVD.

Strange, I guess typical of Losey. Meandering plot including a trip to Japan and conflicts between two couples, one consisting of Jean-Pierre Cassel and Jeanne Moreau, the other of a young Isabelle Huppert and Jacques Spiesser The two couples meet at a bowling alley and the rest of the action insues, with occasional flashbacks. A key element is that Huppert's character grew up on a trout farm where she learned that men are rotters but can be maniuplated. Her husband, Spiesser, is a gay alcoholic whe engages in shady art deals. Cassel is a millionaire who is attracted to Huppert, but it's Cassel's partner, Daniel Olbrychski, who lures Huppert on a long trip to Japan. Uninvolving, with a meandering and seemingly pointless plot, but with beautiful mise-en-scène and good cast, including Roland Bertin and Alexis Smith .. Hard to care about any of them. Huppert carries herself with something of her later aplomb but it has little effect.

[wpqx]

Finally got to see the Virgin Spring (1960), bringing my Bergman total up to about 19 or 20. The film was later remade by Wes Craven in the deliciously low budget flawed but loveable Last House on the Left. I admired the raw appeal of Craven's early film, but from many aspects Bergman's is the superior version. Bergman's film is shorter, to the point, and the first collaboration with Sven Nikvist, a monumental occasion in and of itself. That said the cinematography is absolutely perfect. The film itself suffers a little in it's simplicity and overly somber mood, but still a recommended Bergman, just not another masterpiece.

Aside from that I've just been watching Laurel and Hardy shorts, watched County Hospital yesterday which is now topping my list of films with the worst rear projection ever.

[Chris Knipp]

Try to remember: IT'S=IT+IS. ITS=POSSESSIVE.
The film itself suffers a little in it's simplicity and overly somber mood, but still a recommended Bergman, just not another masterpiece.
ITS SIMPLICITY. POSSESSIVE. P.s. What does "just not another masterpiece" mean, exactly? On second thought, never mind!

[Chris Knipp]

Olivier Péray Breakin Out/Grosse bêtise (2001) Netflix DVD

Light made-for-TV French film about a 13-year-old who tries to break his mom out of prison. Much charm is added by Oassini Embarek (of A Tout de suite) as his best mate and Stéphane Caillard as his sister by adoption, who joins in the planning.

[wpqx]

Man you are a grammar whore. Anyways, my comment about the Virgin Spring is that it is not among Bergman's very best. Some would argue it is a masterpiece and a milestone in his career. I'll admit that the Oscar that it won invariably helped his career along, I don't think that it was for a particularly strong film. Also considering it won that Oscar when La Dolce Vita and L'Avventura were out, but again the Oscars and foreign films have always been a joke. I had a similar overrated reaction to Cries and Whispers, where it was took itself a little too seriously.

Boondock Saints (1999) - William Duffy

This modern Dirty Harry story has become a bit of a cult film in the years since it's ignored release. Duffy wrote and directed the film and tries to keep things interesting. No crime seems to take place in it's proper time, but is always shown in flashback (at least until the end). It is an interesting strategy, and although Willem Dafoe can go a little over the top he's always endearing. Dafoe is one of the few actors that I actually look forward to seeing overact (except for Spider Man). He is great at being ridiculous, and I must say he's a better looking female than a male in this picture. The touch about making him gay was great, although still homophobic. That was just one of the likeable qualities of the film, plenty of humor. Even at fairly crucial moments, there was always a little humor to go around. The basic vigilante concept is nothing remotely new, but at least its handled in a somewhat fresh manner. I won't be surprised if this film gradually earns a more respected reputation.

Le Samourai (1967) - Jean Pierre Melleville

Thanks to a glorious new Criterion DVD, I have finally managed to see this film. It is a remarkably detached, cold French film, and probably the best (from what I've seen) of Mr. Melleville. Alain Delon is emotionless, and so is the rest of the cast. Hard to tell if it's an acting style, or if the French are as a nation just that emotionally removed from the world. The ending is leaving me somewhat perplexed, but that's a good thing. Endings that are open or ambiguous usually leave a greater impression, and I'm still trying to sort that one out. Great mood and pace however and certainly recommended.

[Chris Knipp]

Andrew Nicol: Lord of War (2005) Netflix DVD.

This portrait of a big time arms dealer of Ukrainian origin, Yuri Orlov, starring Nicolas Cage (whose performance holds your attention throughout), has many schlocky Hollylwood elements, such as Yuri's druggie brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) and his trophy wife (Bridget Moynahan), his many sexy conquests along the way to megawealth, his "friendship" with the dramatic president of Liberia (Eamonn Walker), and the ridiculously relentless and steely Interpol agent who pursues him (Ethan Hawke). All these are colorful exhibits rather then people. The slickness of the decor and cinematography impress pointlessly. Cage's narration is full of tendentious declarations, like "The problem with dating dream girls is that they have a tendency to become real." Or "I would tell you to go to hell, but I think you're already there." Some of the zingers fall flat or are just obvious, like "I sell to leftists, and I sell to rightists. I even sell to pacifists, but they're not the most regular customers," or "There are two types of tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want, the other is getting it. " There is more than enough of that, and you have to be pretty easily impressed to like it. The movie also sometimes revels in the evils it depicts. But it includes some significant home truths about world politics like the fact that the world's biggest arms dealers are the US, UK, France, Russia, and China, and they are also the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Some of the cynicism in this movie is pretty strong stuff. It certainly doesn't lull you.

[wpqx]

Drowning by Numbers (1988) - Peter Greenaway

Mr. Greenaway is an oddity in the world of film. A man constantly accused of style over substance, with a predominant obsession with patterns, structure, and numbers. This film is arguably the most easy to spot pattern of his work. The film opens with a girl jump roping, counting the stars up until she hits 100. From then on numbers appear in order and you get a feeling by the time you reach the 40's that the film will end at the centennial. The games played, rules concocted seem like a perfect excuse for Greenaway to dabble in all things eccentric and ordered.

The film has a certain style, and one that is only partially similar to his other pictures. The acting is much more deadpan than usual, and the actors and particularly the actresses show little to know emotion. The film itself is set in a world that is not quite the present, but not quite the past, in a remote part of the country (what country who knows?) scarcely populated. It is it's own little world, and a delightful one at that. Always adding significance to names, Greenaway gives his three female leads the same name, and of course their differences in age help to shape the structure of the plot.

Everything is ordered here, and some of the particular numbers are hard to spot. Walls read them, animals carry numbers, and sometimes you have to look at license plates and other hard to see details. If I can get another look at the film I would like to write down exactly where every number is located, it would make for some interesting study for sure. Nothing is accidental in Greenaway's films. He is one of the most deliberate of filmmakers and every shot, and every actors placement, line, and emotion has a reason and contributes to some greater whole. It makes his films infinately rewarding and easily re-watchable. Drowning by Numbers is only the 4th film of his that I have had the pleasure to see, but as I've noticed his films seem to improve with each new one I see, making me overly excited to see many of his other films. This one however receives a solid A rating and will stand for now as my favorite amongst his films.

Grade A

[Chris Knipp]

Steven Soderbergh: Bubble (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1667) (2005). Just released in Landmark and some other theaters, on DVD, and on HDNet for HDTV owners and subscribers.

[Chris Knipp]

Hou Hsiao Hsien, Café Lumiere (2003) Netflix.

A girl who is pregnant is visited by her parents and may not know who the father is. Her main friend works in a bookstore and records train sounds as a hobby. Did I mention this before? I saw it a week or so ago I guess, but it did not leave a very strong impression and I forgot to list it. It seems to me in retrospect that the resemblence to Ozu, whom this was commissioned by the producer as a sort of homage to, is superficial indeed. Ozu can make you cry. This left me blank. It's about people avoiding real contact with each other. That's not the same as being reserved. In fact it's extremely different. People who are shy and reserved may care very intensely. The impression is that these people just don't feel very much. If this is how things are now in Japan, too bad; but would Hou really know? He's Chinese. He has even admitted in interviews that culturally he was out of his depth. Despite very assured style, the deadpan story has no pulse. This is more a perversion of than homage to the great Ozu.

Nigel Cole, A Lot Like Love (2005) Store rental.

Two young people with uncertain futures (Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet) meet in an airport, have sex in the plane, and keep running into each other every few years under the wrong circumstances till seven years later, they finally both realize at the same moment that it's for keeps. Just a light romantic comedy, but Cole and his actors do a nice job with it, the two leads are both easy on the eyes, and their chemistry is good. You may come to this with misgivings or low expectations, but you are likely to leave feeling like the Times critic: '"A Lot Like Love" isn't half bad and every so often is pretty good, filled with real sentiment, worked-through performances and a story textured enough to sometimes feel a lot like life.' It's nice and pretty unusual nowadays when something so conventionally mainstream turns out to be very decent, entertaining, and in good taste. I may not remember this very well, but the memory that lingers is a pleasant one.

Kim Ki-duk, 3-Iron (2004). Store rental.

I'd been waiting to see this, and though the high concept was already a little too familiar from previous reports to cause much excitement by now, it was still original and certainly well worth a viewing. The odd, mute drifter lead (Hyun-kyoon Lee), breaks into houses just to putter around, do laundry, clean up, and fix broken appliances. He never takes anything, but he tries out clothes and sleeps in their bed. He seems rather effeminite, since his thing is housekeeping. Accordingly first the young actor, on whom the whole film depends, seems to be just a little pretty-boy type, but he proves to have exceptional mime and acrobatic skills and a sly quality that is intriguing. The wordless sequences highight the film's strong emphasis on photographic images, sound and picture, which are beautiful, chilly, and unique. An Arabic love song, played over and over, is haunting, if a bit cloying after a while. Director Kim Ki-duk may be just a bit too much in love with his own ideas and stylistic tics. I was not an admirerer of Kim Ki-duk's Spring, summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring, which seemed way too contrived and fanciful to me, and the same ultimately is rather true of this. There are even plot elements that remind one of Park Chan-wook's Oldboy, and I'm beginning to wonder if there is something wacky about the Korean imagination that I am never going to be tuned in to. Nice, very thought-provoking ending redeems the wandering last quarter section. I'd rate this higher than Spring, Summer, Fall...etc. but not put it in the prize category. Kim has originality and a strong visual sense. I don't find his fantasies quite convincing. Nonetheless the idea is distinctive enough to stick in one's mind.

[Johann]

Thanks Chris.

The finest writer here...

How's those San Fran death fogs?

[Chris Knipp]

Thank you, you're very kind. Death fogs are okay. It's just turned warm. Actually I live in the East Bay now where it's a little warmer anyway.

[Chris Knipp]

Alexandr Sokurov, Moloch (1999) Netflix DVD.

Part of a tetrology that includes the recent, amazing The Sun about Hirohito (2005, shown at the New York Film Festival but as yet without a US distributor), as well as Taurus (Telets, 2002) , about a mortally ill Lenin. (The fourth I think is not yet made.) All concern men of great power at decisive and tragic moments. Moloch concerns Hitler in 1942 in an eagle's nest castle in the Bavarian Alps, isolated, as in other portraits, among his cadres and Eva Braun, indulging in grumpy vegetarian dinners and tossing about weird racist remarks about other nationalities. This is acted by strong members of the theater of St. Petersburg, Elena Rufanova as Eva Barun, Leonid Mosgovoi as Hitler, Leonid Solol as Goebbels, Yelena Spirindonova as Frau Goebbels, Vladimir Bogdanov as Martin Bormann, whose lines are dubbed by German actors, and this is done well. The whole is bathed in a murky green-gray or verdigris fog -- saturated, someone has written, with a kind of patina characteristic of old Agfa films -- the fogginess typical also of Sokurov's style elsewhere, with (as in The Sun) a sumptuous feel in the mise-en-scène and amazing, evocative period realness to objects (photo books, ashtrays, serving dishes) which seem at once solid and delicate. Yes, this is remarkable filmmaking. But the film as a whole is yawn-inducing. Hitler spends most of his screen time moaning about his health. Ten minutes are devoted to Eva's wandering around naked without a word spoken. She is graceful and athletic; but why? Well, to evoke the boredom and idleness of the isolated concubine -- but is such length necessary?

Moloch is very different from, and rather disappointing in comparison to, The Sun's stunning, touching portrayal of Hirohito, which dwells also on trivial moments, but always in the cause of a sensitive exploration of character and situation. There is a hushed intimacy about The Sun that Moloch, though it has a few grand moments, never attempts. Hitler doesn't even really talk enough, and this brings us to the inevitable fact that at this date, 2006, Moloch is thoroughly overshadowed by the far more conventional, sometimes heavy-handed, but nonetheless richly detailed and accurate and breathlessly exciting recreation of the last days in the Bunker achieved recently by Oliver Hirschbiegel in his Downfall (Der Untergang, 2004), released in the US last year and containing Bruno Ganz's powerful performance as the Nazi dictator.

Vikram Jayanti, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine (2003) Netflix DVD.

In 1997 Kasparov, considered the greatest chess player in history, played a high profile match against an IMB supercomputer called Deep Blue devised for the sole purpose of not only playing world class chess but beating the greatest of grand masters. The stakes were $700,000-$400,000, winner/loser. It can't be said that Deep Blue really beat Kasparov, who had beaten a simpler form of the computer several years earlier. What happened is that the second of the six games spooked Kasparov so much -- and he resigned, when later it was pointed out he might have achieved a draw -- that he never recovered psychologically, and by game six he was a psychological wreck, couldn't focus, and resigned, thereby losing the match.

Surely Jayanti has a good subject: the human brain against artificial intelligence, the triumph of steely mindless machinery over brilliant, volatile intellectual genius. The filmmaker spoils his documentary by intruding too much with portentous music, gimmicky images of antique dolls, and by too little questioning the accusations that Kasparov throws out against IBM. There's still interest here, and so much at stake that it may be understandable that some have called this the best film about chess ever. Nonetheless that seems a bit of a misnomer given that there is so little specifically about chess and its moves -- though there is valuable and relevant information about the psychological pressures of great matches and the statistical complexity of the game itself.

Kasparov's personality is lively and his English is excellent, and that helps counteract the gimmicky use of antique mechanical chess-playing dummies as a suggestive "echo" of the IMB mega-computer Deep Blue, the portentous music, some whispering voice-overs, and Jayanti's aforementioned refusal to challenge any claims Kasparov makes about the way things went.

Kasparov challenged Karpov in 1984-85 in a huge series of games, Armenian Jew against, as he saw it, the Soviet block, and for his overall performance he had established himself as "the greatest chess player in history." (If there are any challenges to that claim, as no doubt there are, the film doesn't go into them.) In 1997 IBM, seeking to improve its stolid image against the livelier profiles of Microsoft and Apple, staged a hugely promoted New York six-game match between World Champion Kasparov and a newly improved and enlarged Deep Blue. They had six boffins lined up before and after each game, the chess and programming experts who were Deep Blue's handlers. Was that good strategy, lining up six grinning Asian and caucasian nerds against one challenged Armenian Jew? Doubtful; and though at the end, IBM sternly directed its crew not to smile, that did little to offset its earlier displays of conspicuous nerdly smugness. IBM also maintained tight security around the implacement of the large computer, and refused ever to release printouts of its operations to Kasparov.; according to him, they promised to at the end, but never did.

What happened is this: in game one, Deep Blue played like a machine, and Kasparov won easily. He thought that would continue. But in game two, he attempted a trick with pawns -- the film never goes into any detail about the actual chess moves and offers little of concrete interest to chess enthusiasts, but something that would normally lead a computer astray, into immediate profiting. But the machine didn't fall for it, and instead embarked on a mysterious and very humanoid-seeming grand strategy that put Kasparov in a very bad position. He was stunned. He overreacted, resigning as mentioned though later he realized he could have extracted a draw from the situation. From game two on, the champion became lastingly paranoid. And throughout the rest of the match, he never got over it. He suspected that some grand masters were assisting in deciding the moves of Deep Blue against him; and there were plenty of grand masters around, presumably in the employ of IBM. It's generally agreed, according to the film, that even a merely fine chess player, not necessarily world class, working together with a computer, could beat anybody. And that would not have been fair, and wasn't what was agreed upon. However, the film never provides a shred of evidence that IBM cheated in this way. All that's clear is that a machine doesn't lose its cool, and a human chess player very often does. Great a player as he is, Kasparov isn't cool. Someone remarks that he would make a terrible poker player, and in fact when things (in his view) are not going well, it is written all over his face and conspicuous in his body language. Kasparov, and Jayanti with his style, suggest that IBM's manipulations connect with Eighties YUPPIE thinking and corporate, Enron-style greed. But there is no proof of this. All that is clear is that IBM and it boffins lacked finesse, but fared well: stock went up in value 15% after this event. Where Kasparov is now isn't made very clear, but it appears that he is still playing and winning, against humans, and in 2003 tied in a match against the latest computer chess master, Deep Blue Junior, in Israel, and he has met various challenges in recent years, been beaten, but still remains the greatest. You can review Kasparov's chess
history (http://www.academicchess.com/Pictureshows/kasparovpictureshow/Garry%20Kasparov_files/frame.htm) online at various sites. Kasparov is a great player. His full story has yet to be etched in celluloid.

[Chris Knipp]

Stephen Chow, Kung Fu Hustle (2005) Rental store DVD.

"From walking disaster to Kung Fu Master." The Axe Gang rules, even the slums, but Sing (Chow) comes in and finds some eccentric landlords who are king fu masters in disguise. This is both a parody and a homage to kung fu classics, which makes ample use of modern digitalization techniques to create hilarious visual puns and games. "Imagine a film in which Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny" says Ebert. Kevin B. Lee's review (http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/2005/0405/050422.html) in the Chicago Reader will discuss the context of this movie in learned fashion for you, explaining how Chow puts ordinary everyday Chinese characters "back into a genre whose elements have degenerated into global cliche." I don't know that I appreciated all that, but I could see this would be huge fun for the intense kung fu fan, and I also could see the link Lee notes with Sergio Leone.

Arie Posen, The Chumscrubber (2005) Rental store DVD.

This satirical drama about suburbia talks about middle-class alienation and confusion, nihilistic kids, and stuff like that. A young high school loner named Dean Stiffle (Jamie Bell) has a dad (William Fitchtner) who exploits his kid's alienation to write psychological self-help books. His mom is Allison Janney of "The West Wing." Dean has now found his friend hanging, a suicide. He's approached first by Crystal (Camilla Belle), who likes him, then by a punk pseudo-macho friend of hers, Billy (Justin Chatwin), who hangs out with another kid, Lee (Lou Taylor Pucci, of Thumbsucker) to demand that Dean reclaim some drugs that were at the dead boy's house and that Billy says are his. They try to kidnap Dean's little brother Charlie (Rory Culkin) but they get the wrong Charlie, Charley Bratley (Thomas Curtis), whose mom designs all the new houses around and is so excited that she's about to marry the town's spacey new-age mayor (Ralph Fiennes) she doesn't even notice her kid is gone. The dead boy's kooky mom, who's laying guilt trips on everybody and preparing a memorial service that will compete with the mayor's wedding accoss the street, is played by Glenn Close.

The payoff comes at the end when, in a tearful speech, Jamie Bell tells Ms. Close that her son loved her, that he didn't off himself because of her but because he wanted to be a rock star and he wasn't musical.

This movie bombed in theaters and critics shredded it, but it offers some entertainment on DVD because a lot is going on. It wants to be American Beauty, River's Edge, and Donnie Darko all rolled up into one movie, and maybe Thumbsucker, since it has Pucci in it; people who hate this movie aren't likely to like Thumbsucker; if you liked Thumbsucker as I did, you may be willing to give this movie the benefit of the doubt; unfortunately, it leaves you flat. It fails in its aims to enter the Black Suburban Comedy sweepstakes because, despite an interesting cast, some of them (like Fiennes and Close) misused, it doesn't have a screenplay of enough depth or originality to be memorable. Maybe another flaw is that the director, a Canadian son of Russian emigrant parents, can't get a grip on the atmosphere.

The setting is reminiscent of the outrageous cult classic 1979 teen revolt movie, Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge, and you keep hoping the kids will set fire to their school or something the way the young Matt Dillon and his pals did, but they don't. You don't even see them in school, or envision them as a real force or sensibility. There's just a little teenage angst and a lot of adult confusion and blather. Still, this will keep you awake better than Moloch.

[Chris Knipp]

Jia Zhang-ke, Unknown Pleasures (2002) Rental store DVD

Jia Zhang-ke's movie is powerful and sad. It concerns what you might call two young semi-urban hicks with no future, both rail-thin, constantly smoking, one Bin Bin (Zhao Wei Wei), tall and sad-faced, the other, Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong), a smaller guy with a stylish haircut that covers a lot of his face. The former has a girlfriend, but he and she agree to separate while she goes through exams. Then she reproaches him for not asking how she did, but he protests that he's out of the loop so didn't know when she was done. His mother, a Falun Gong sympathizer, says he's useless and he offers to enter the army. But when he has a blood test, it shows he has hepatitis and he's ineligible for military service. The orderly warns him about contact with a girl because it's very contagious. It seems like his life is over.

Neither guy has a job and they have no money. Xiao Ji, the smaller, more rakish one, who is all bravado and no follow-through, practically stalks a girl named Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) who's an entertainer for a drink company and who has a petty gangster for a boyfriend. This older punk eventually has the kid roughed up at a disco for dancing with his girlfriend, and turns out to carry a gun. The girl at first rejects the boy, but then they go together and even sleep together.

After he learns he has hepatitis Bin Bin borrows money from a shyster and gives his girlfriend an expensive present in a very sad scene where he won't touch her and she leaves him sitting by himself inertly in a typically desolate train station.

Both the pals have dead-end lives. Sometimes the Chinese landscape, a vast rural-turning-into-urban wasteland under construction, reminds one of Italian neorealism and the poverty of postwar European cities and one may be reminded of Pasolini's 1961 first film about young toughs with nothing to do, Accattone, but these Chinese boys are more passive and inarticulate and lack the Italians' false bravado.

Bin Bin starts selling discs to make back the money he owes but that looks hopeless and Xiao Ji's motorbike is starting to break down. Finally they decide to rob a bank. Naturally such a demanding project undertaken by two individuals of such low energy and flair is a complete flop, and the tall boy is arrested while the punk-haired one flees on the bike, but he has to leave it by the side of a desolate highway and hitch a ride in a van.

Bin Bin, in jail, is forced to sing a song and he sings a hopeful song about working class people he sang with his girlfriend in front of the TV at a happier moment. The film ends here, with the voiceover of the boy and girlfriend singing over the final credits.

The ironically named Unknown Pleasures is an infinitely sad, unpredictable, seemingly aimless, but ultimately very meaningful and awesome movie that is at once primitive, real, and deeply touching. This is a great movie. It takes you somewhere you've never been before, somewhere painful and unforgettable. You can say this is a "depiction of the spiritual malaise afflicting Chinese youth as a result of global capitalism" as Howard Schumann has done, but that is to articulate the thing in a way that the participants in the story could not do. Rather, it is a couple of aimless lives awash in a changing modern China pretty near to the bottom of the social scale; but it is also a picture of lack of chutzpah, helplessness, failure to thrive. TV's, always on in some room, show events in and out of China, new construction, criminal prosecutions, a downed US plane, Beijing chosen for the Olympics, and there is talk of dollars and video games and even Pulp Fiction's opening scene, but all this is little more than a noisy distraction for the aimless boys. The young people in Hou's Millennium Mambo are rather different. They are all good looking hustlers, and they may go nowhere either but they're going to make some kind of splash and spend some money along the way. But while Hou's film seems on the outside looking in cluelessly, Jia enters to the core of his characters' grim shallow lives and etches them on our hearts forever. Jia creeps up on you slowly and then never lets you go. This is the most powerful film I've seen in a long while. Its contents seem trashy and junky, but turn out to be astonishingly vivid and rich visually and aurally, a mix, also, that you've never quite seen before and aren't going to forget even if you wanted to.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for this information, this sounds interesting and important though perhaps a bit creepy. You perhaps make fewer judgments than I would. But you are right, that it is an unusual view, and an unusual thing that he was allowed in at all.

Have been watching a lot of DVD's myself, never so many as so far this year.....Just finished Millennium Mambo and then Good Men, Good Women, followed by Amelio's Lamerica. But I can't write about them yet.

[pmw]

Chris, Im so glad you were able to see Unknown Pleasures. It's an incredible film. The characters as you say are aimless, hopeless and ultimately simple witnesses to an indifferent world spinning around and around with or without them. It's incredibly sad and incredibly real. Surely these kinds of people are more in number than the greats we see depicted in film over and over again. Dare I say most of the world is this way?

The snow continues to fall and all the stores are closed here in Waltham, MA. So today I eat soup and drink water. Thanks for reminding me of Jia Zhang-ke! Have you seen Platform yet?
P

[Chris Knipp]

I am going to see The World shortly; it's coming. I don't know about Platform yet. I'm sorry you're snowed in. Sounds like fun but I guess after a day or so it isn't. Stay warm.

[Chris Knipp]

Reviews posted on my website (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=528)

Hou Hsiao-hsien: Good Men, Good Women (1995) Netflix

Puzzling multilayered picture of Taiwan's past and present

[Excerpt:]

Hou's concept is an interesting one: instead of a straight linear narrative either about the White Terror period in Taiwanese history or about an actor with a dead gangster boyfriend, he overlaps the two, and adds a further layer by putting the gangster a couple of years ago, and the actress now getting ready to act in a historical film about the White Terror, while being bugged in the present by somebody who sends her faxes of a stolen diary about the gangster, and calls and breathes into the phone. Hou isn't trying to spoon-feed us, and that's admirable. He is also allowing us to ponder complex inter-historical relationships. But the effect of the spliced layers is jarring and doesn't always work.

Hou Hsiao-hsien: Millennium Mambo (2001) Netflix

Such beautiful angst

[Excerpts:]

Atypically for Hou, the camera moves around quite a bit too in this film, following the people and hugging their faces and bodies -- but also lingering, in his old style, statically observing doorways, walls, light fixtures, or windows with a train going by outside. . .as always for Hou and for many Chinese directors, the visuals are lush and beautifully lit. . .This is a remake of Antonioni's L'Avventura, in winter, with young attractive Asians -- and Qi Shu as the new Monica Vitti -- but without the world-weariness or awareness of any sort of fading cultural heritage.

[Chris Knipp]

Gianni Amelio: Lamerica(1994)

An overwhelming transformative journey

Review on Chris Knipp website. (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=529)

[Excerpts:]

In his 1994 Lamerica Gianni Amelio raises traditional linear Italian filmmaking to new heights using the methods of neorealism to carry his audience along on a dreamlike, ironic mythologizing journey whose mood and methods are all his own. This very powerful film, which is as fantastic as it is vividly concrete and sad (imagine Kafka with a Sicilian accent), tells the story of two Italians, Fiore (Michele Placido, director of the recent Romanzo criminale) and his assistant Gino (Enrico Lo Verso) who come to the impoverished, wrecked post-communist Albania with the scam of setting up a shell shoe factory as what they -- or Fiore, at least, because he alone is the mastermind and evil genius of the scam -- thinks will be a profitable tax shelter. . . .Like the great Italian neorealist filmmakers of the Forties and Fifties from whom he has learned so much, Amelio uses real places and real people with almost miraculous skill. His desolate landscapes and teeming busses and truckloads and shiploads of Albanians are so intense you're swept away by them scene after scene and the film flows with a sense of inevitability that's at once troubling and beautiful. You just have to let it flow over you and follow.

[Chris Knipp]

Tian Zhuangzhuang The Blue Kite (1993) Netflix DVD

Tian depicts the destructive and painful period of Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and "Social Education Movement" in China from 1953 to 1966 -- the spying, the public beatings and humiliations, the months of forced farm labor, families ripped apart, years of being sent away to gulags without explanation -- which led up to the beginning of the even more destructive "Cultural Revolution" by which Mao disrupted the old orders. And the director depicts this period in this movie so realistically that it got him blacklisted and he couldn't make another till the very arty somewhat western-influenced and theatrical (but subtle and beautiful) depiction of psychological conflicts of his 2002 Springtime in a Small Town, which takes place before the coming of communism and Mao in China and so avoids the whole pressing issue. In The Blue Kite Tian depicts political and social events through showing how they impinge on the life of a single famlly, mainly a small boy who narrates and his mother who has three husbands. The story makes for an exhausting and exhaustive two hours and 18 minutes. Maybe it's best to watch in segments of 45 minutes or so and then you'll see how beautiful some of the images are and how distinctive the boy and his mother become, despite typecasting of some of the family members (brave uncle going blind, mannish female party hack, fussy old grannies, etc.). While the large social and historical canvas covered in such a short period of time may wear you down, it shouldn't keep you from noticing the fine psychoclogical observation of the main characters, and the many little choice moments. This is a must-see, since it's got to be considered pretty much as significant artistically as it is politically.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for this information. I hadn't heard of this doc, and have put it in my Netflix queue now.

[Chris Knipp]

Yasujiro Ozu, Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari), 1953 Netflix DVD/Criterion

An old couple from the provinces go to visit their various children, and a daughter-in-law who is the only loyal and loving younger person, in Tokyo; they return, and taking ill on the long train ride, the wife dies, with all of the children but one present for her death, but relatively indifferent, except for the daughter-in-law, who is stricken.

One may remember the indifferent children of Mr. Watanabe, in Kurosawa's Ikiru; his solution of course is dynamic--he becomes almost a secular saint, by returning to his old city hall job and spending his remaining months of life stopping at nothing to get a park built in a poor part of town. Ozu's old couple is more ordinary and static, wiser than Watanabe was at first, but passive observers, essentially dignified victims, without Watanabe's desperately intense desire to make worthwhile use of a short remaining time to live. Notably, though, Ozu called this film "melodramatic," because however restrained the old couple's observations are, the film plays extremes against each other and tugs forcefully at our heartstrings.

Obviously a masterpiece, Tokyo Story has a typically slow, almost casual plot construction -- a sequence of virtual "non-events" native to Ozu -- which nonetheless are momentous in their implication. It would be hard not to be moved by Tokyo Story's rueful comments on the ungratefulness of children, the separation of generations in a modernized world, and the transitory nature of all life. Visually it's striking how boxed-in the people look in all the domestic interiors, with the low-centered camera positions and the square format -- corresponding to the way the visiting parents are confined in Tokyo because they don't know their way around and their children don't bother much about entertaining them. It's also striking how the old man Shukishi (Chishu Ryu) and woman Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) both look kind of dorky and have great inner stillness, dignity, and sweetness (part of this is good manners: they represent traditional courtesy). This duality of appearances somehow helps make them more universal. The "melodrama" is in the way the hairdresser daughter Shige (Haruko Sugimura) is a little too shrill and nasty, and the widowed daughter-in-law Noriko (Setsuko Hara) is a little too sweet at the opposite pole. (But Hara's face is marvelous with its beaming smile and sad knowing eyes -- a contrast that provides essential commentary on her reply that life is indeed disappointing.) Perhaps these emphatic contrasts have to be there in a plot that otherwise is so subtle. The middle son Keizo (Shiro Osaka), who lives in Osaka midway between Tokyo and the parents' place, arrives late when his mother has already passed away, and he is very upset: but you can't be sure this isn't just because of a loss of face in front of his siblings, rather than real caring.

A lot of credit for the marvelous construction of the story must go to the author or co-writer with Ozu, Kôgo Noda. Ryu was only 49 when this was made, but he was still acting in a couple of movies when he was 88, a couple of years before he died. Higashiyama, who plays the old "oka-san," was a much older 63.

Sam Adams of the Philadelphia City Paper makes the interesting comment apropos of this film, "It's hard to think of a filmmaker whose work at once eschews so many of the tools of cinema and is yet so cinematic." Agreed: Tokyo Story is nothing like a play or novel, and in it, the camera is the central player, while the actors seem astonishingly real, preserved forever in every detail on film.

[Johann]

Thanks Chris.
Tokyo Story is definitely a masterpiece.


Just got invited to the press screening of Hou's Three Times on March 6th. My first Hou on the big screen...

[Chris Knipp]

Enjoy it.

[wpqx]

Rize (2005) - David LaChapelle

I'm not sure exactly if this is nominated for best documentary this year, probably not, but nevertheless. This film was quite a catastrophe for me to see. When I went to the ghetto ass theater that played it, the power failed, and two days later when we tried to catch it again, they already took the film out, so I had to wait many more months. Perhaps however it is for the best to check this out on a small screen. The film is shot in standard ratio, so it's perfectly formatted for the small screen. Sure it loses a little in that setting, but it is an intimate film.

LaChapelle has his background in music videos and photography, and it is very obvious here. He has a strong sense of composition, and the editing is brisk and very familiar for people who have seen his work. He tries at times to put this dance movement into a larger context, and I think he succeeds. Arguably the best moment in the film comes from a scene of the crumpers intercut with native African tribe dancing, uncanny how similar the movements are.

Hustle and Flow (2005) - Craig Brewer

The last of the best actor nominees I needed to see, Brewer's film features a remarkable Terrence Howard fresh off the heals of his turn in Crash. The plot is somewhat simple, of a pimp trying to make it in the rap game, the film parallels many others of the era, but is balanced by all around fantastic acting. Howard may be getting the most credit, but I think that Taraji Henson and Taryn Manning both do fantastic work here. The music is pretty damn good too, much of it written by unknown rapper Al Kapone. The DVD special features just constantly repeat how no one wanted to make the movie, but that's very typical of this sort of thing. Not the best movie of the year, but Howard is fantastic, and I support his nomination.

[Chris Knipp]

Arguably the best moment in the film comes from a scene of the crumpers intercut with native African tribe dancing, uncanny how similar the movements are.
I'd agree. In general this seemed a sloppy effort to me otherwise; I was disappointed. He got too distracted with the personal material and neglected the dancing.

Agreed on Hustle and Flow, and the moment-of-inventing-the-song had some life in it.

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by Johann
Just got invited to the press screening of Hou's Three Times on March 6th. My first Hou on the big screen...

Congratulations! Looking forward to your comments. I think Three Times is also receiving a limited run in Toronto so I might just go up there to watch it again (I initially saw it at the TIFF); the film truly deserves to be seen on the big screen.

By the way, great post on The New World.

[Johann]

Thanx Bro.

I'll post about it as soon as I'm outta the theatre...

I'm pretty excited about it.
It played at the VIFF but the schedule prevented me from getting in to see it. ( I couldn't miss The Quays for it).

[Chris Knipp]

Claude Sautet: Classe tous risques (1960) Theatrical revival.

This revival with a new print and subtitles doesn't quite justify raves by John Woo and other s who call it a noir "masterpiece" and "recovered cinema treasure" or even "better than Melville." It is not as good as Melville, not as stylish or as studded with memorable scenes. Jean-Paul Belmondo is unusually sunny and warm hearted as the loner who comes in to save out-in-the-cold Lino Ventura (usually a secondary character and not a very appealing dude) who loses his wife in a gunfight while escaping from Italy, and is saddled with two young boys. He mourns the lost wife; but what was he doing robbing banks with a wife and kids in tow all over Italy? And why don't the kids shed a tear when mom's shot down on the beach? A bunch of old mates betray Lino, failing to own up to their debts to him; this is where Belmondo comes in. But the plot has a tendency to drift -- Belmondo settles in with a new girlfriend met on the rescue mission, and Lino continues to flounder. Instead of some dramatic finale with a speech like Belmondo's in Godard's noir homage Breathless, Ventura walks off into a Paris street crowd and the stern voiceover announces he soon got caught, sentenced, and executed. It's certainly fun to see a new black and white French "polar noir" from 1960 aftrer all these years. There are the usual flavorful noir trappings of trenchcoats, little dark suits, cigarettes, guns, and cars and the fatalistic attitudes to go with them, and there are atmospheric scenes in bars and cafes and on the Paris trottoirs, and Belmondo gets one or two nice lines like "my best feature is my left," but fans of Melville must have forgotten the master if they think this is as good as it gets. Nor is this anywhere as good as Claude Sautet gets. He excels in relationship films and psychological studies like Les choses de la vie, César et Rosalie, Vincent, François, Paul, et les autres, and of course the more recent Un cœur en hiver and Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud.

[Chris Knipp]

Jia Zhang-ke, The World (2005) Netflix DVD.

A lot to say about anything by Jia, who is a brilliant and original director, no doubt about that, but I still would list Unknown Pleasures as my favorite of his by far, so far. Maybe a big element of this is that it has no very clear agenda, and the weakness of The world is that it very much has one and never really lets loose. I was struck by the acting in The World, though; these people really are good.

Three by Jia Zhang-ke: Leading new director of China's "Sixth Generation" of Filmmakers

I've put combined comments on Jia's Platform, Unknown Pleasures, and The World on my webite here (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=533.).

[Chris Knipp]

Sydney Pollack: The Interpreter (2005)

Glossy mediocrity

A whispered conversation overheard after hours at the General Assembly by a UN interpreter (Nicole Kidman) reveals that someone plans to assassinate an African leader who's soon to speak there. They were talking in an African language that is her specialty, and she has a special connection with the country where it's spoken. Reluctantly alerting the authorities she is soon pursued by Africans and guarded by a Secret Service man (Sean Penn), while plans are made to avoid an international incident which would be particularly embarrassing to the US since it is not favorable to the leader in question. . . .

One could never quite bring oneself to see this and now one sees why. After ten months, finally, wandering in a rental shop not noted for its rich or exotic offerings, one said, "Why not?" Well, here's why not. Because this is a loud, glossy mediocrity. Because it is not believable for a minute, because the actors are miscast, and because there is hardly a single memorable scene. . .

[For the review go here. (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=534)]

[Johann]

City Lights


Rented the new Warners 2-DVD set and loved every frame.

But am I the only one who thinks the girl's "revelation" at the end was a little hammy?

I mean, how was she cured? and overnight at that?

She's a beautiful cinematic angel, tho.

The thing that made me laugh the most was Chaplin testing out his boxing gloves in the dressing room, his hands & arms rolling and roiling- hilarious. Then there's the black guy with his good luck charms coming back into the room after his fight.

75 years old.
Still holds up magnificently.

[Chris Knipp]

Lots of stuff in Chaplin is hammy. That doesn't keep it from being classic, though.

[Johann]

Three Times


This goes down as one of the greatest experiences I've ever had at a movie theatre.
Hou Hsiao Hsien is an artist, and he's the most intelligent filmmaker this side of Godard.
This film is the epitome of "quality" cinema.
Precision filmmaking.
Even Kubrick would have to admit that this is EXACTING.

I mean Jesus, look where Hou places his camera.
The camera belongs nowhere else but where he puts it.
His images and the way he edits them to tell his stories is beyond "auteur".
He's a MASTER folks.
But I'm preaching to the choir here- everybody here knows who this man is, and I'm ashamed to say I've only seen 2 of his films. Shame on me.

This press screening was incredible. The main reason is because there was no one there. (Just 5 of us).
The whole theatre was empty- the mighty VanCity theatre- the one with the absolute optimum viewing conditions. It really seemed as if the movie was played for an audience of one. I had no one in front of me and everybody else sat "up top".
I got the official press kit for the film (which is gorgeous) and sipped divine Twinings earl grey tea beforehand. I felt like an aristocratic film geek.

But anyway- the film.

The first part, "A Time for Love", is staggering moviemaking.
It's set in 1966, mainly in a pool hall and what can I say?
It's first love, 60's Chinese style.
The Platters are crooning, a gorgeous woman & an odd guy are playing a game and the vibes are as warm & fuzzy as cocoa by the fire on a wintry night.
The colors, costumes, sets, HAIR (of both leads-especially in the 2nd story) and overall production value is second to pretty much none.
I can't think of too many films that have this level of quality.
Can you?

The second part, "A Time for Freedom", is my favorite of the whole film. If Griffith were alive to see this he would absolutely love it. It's silent except for astounding music and it is the zenith of cinema. The ZENITH folks!
I don't even want to describe it. It has the exact same actors but it's now set in 1911. The costumes in particular grabbed my eye.
Just look at those designs and colors! Perfect

I do have a minor complaint. *very minor*:

I wanted to see her let her hair down.

Dammit, Hou fades to black just when she's about to "get down to rise" and I was a little miffed. He does that twice in this part.
But so what? He's a Master and he can do what he wants.

The soundtrack is what makes this even more of a masterpiece than it is. Cuz brother, music added to killer images is what makes the most compelling cinema to me. And Hou has some SUBLIME musical moments here.

The third part, "A Time for Youth" was fine fine moviemaking too but it didn't hold my interest as much as the first two did. Probably because it's set in our own vacuuous times (2005).
Modern TaiPei is as bleak as any other industrial "globalized" city, and the love stories that make up this episode didn't move me an inch.

But what made me think was the tattoo on her lover: the Anarky sign. Is Hou commenting on the status quo? I like to think so, even if he isn't. Anarky is desired.

But he saved the best for last. That song and those images that he chooses to end this masterpiece is without question one of the best things I've ever seen/experienced.

That's how a film should end.

With powerful music, with powerful images, and with a powerful sentiment.



The Dardennes film beat this for the Palm D'or?

It must have angels and miracles flying out of every frame, cuz this film is the SHIT people.


GOD BLESS HOU HSIAO HSIEN

[Chris Knipp]

Glad you had such a good experience. A good exprience and a nice press packet can really enhance the old flick experience. Press screenings are the way to go. My favorite is the first "Time." I didn't respond as much to the second, though it is interesting I thought it not quite up to earlier similar films. As for the third, it is like Millennium Mambo, and I don't think contemporary debauchery is Hou's forte. Saw this at the NYFF, where everything was good, or 99% of it. Press screenings, though not just 5 people, no chance of that in NYC...

[oscar jubis]

I just bought an Asian dvd of Three Times. I'll have to wait until the film fest is over to watch it though. Hou is one of the world's top 10 directors. His films are consistently in the "must see" to "masterpiece" range. I just watched L'Enfant at the fest and will be reviewing soon. Now that I think about it, I'd probably place the Dardennes in that director's Top 10 on the strength of their four fiction films. Will we ever get a chance to watch the documentaries that preceded them?

[Chris Knipp]

We should certainly be able to see the earlier work of the Dardennes to be able to speak "learnedly" about it as a whole. Good point.

No doubt about the fact that "Three Times" is beautiful and deserves to be seen on a big screen. I personally found the first part way more appealing and emotionally communicative than the other two. I think Hou had hits and misses. And there's nothing wrong with that. So does Jia, though Jia has a more visceral quality in his impact for me, somehow.

[Chris Knipp]

The 15 films of the

RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA (http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/showing/rendezvous.html)

eleventh season at Lincoln Center, which I'll be reviewing here and posting about on my

WEBSITE (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=537)

concurrently.

[Johann]

The Covenant

Interesting occult movie, with some young people getting caught up in magic and creepiness


Tamara

Another interesting occult "cult" movie, with the title character literally transforming into a haunting, sexy, other-worldly maniac killer witch- yep, she's an ax-wielding, seductive teen hottie.

Made for high-school preppies- you know, fans of "Scream" and "I Know What You did Last Summer".


To Live and Die in L.A.

80's cult classic.
Starring a younger Willem Dafoe & John Turturro, this is my kind of film.

Gritty, pulpy, and gorgeously photographed by ace cameraman Robby Muller, this is a masterpiece of urban violence and counterfeit money madness.

Doom

Craptastic grade-Z actioner with a dash of horror.

Some Space Marines led by "Sarge" (The Rock) are trying to figure out why scientists are biting the dust.

I yawned quite a bit, but it's got enough blood, gore and wacked-out violencia to keep teens and fans of the video game entertained.

Easy Rider

Counter-culture classic that I never get tired of.

Is that "tripping out" scene in the cemetary something else or what? I love it.

"Goin' down to Mardi Gras, gonna have myself a show..."

[Johann]

War of the Worlds

Saw this Spielberg film again on DVD- Cruise and kids are on the run from the get-go,and the action just gets more and more OUT THERE.

I really love how they created the whole "attack".
The special effects are boss. Thought so in the theatre, I think so now. SFX are incredible. VERY high believability factor.

I especially love the angles Kaminski shoots from.
I mean, look at how menacing and distant the pods look!
It stretches the plausibility quotient, but hey, this is WAR of the WORLDS. Who can say what's plausible when something like this happens?
:)


The Hills Have Eyes

This is the one from 2006.
HEAVY, brother, HEAVY.
Really really heavy after watching War of the Worlds...

Wes Craven takes us on an extremely uncomfortable trip with a family stranded in the desert.
Rob Zombie would love this movie.
And so would Clive Barker, probably.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Johann
The Hills Have Eyes

Not my kind of feel-bad but, for those interested, the sequel opens March 2nd.

[bix171]

1.) A Man Escaped.
Robert Bresson seems to be saying because each individual is essentially alone, one's courage means more to one's self than to others. But it is in that courage that others take strength and that appears, in a white puff of smoke at the film's end, to be our saving grace. A rigorous intellectual exercise cleverly offered as a thriller.

2.) The Rapture.
Michael Tolkin's condescending idea of what fundamentalism means to him suffers not only from his finger-pointing but also from the casual way he presents his characters. He asks us to accept leaps from his protagonist's promiscuity to her hardened belief in the purity of Christ's love to her rejection of it but he fails to imbue her with any notions of complexity (and Mimi Rogers in the lead isn't quite up to the task of finding any). Tolkin wants us to believe that this is a woman's personal journey but with his complete contempt of her and her ideals, what's the point of that? The preposterous wacked-out finale is clearly designed to Make You Think.

3.) Bound For Glory.
Though fraught with problems, Hal Ashby's biopic of Woody Guthrie is well worth seeing, most notably for the fine performances (David Carradine is superb as an aw-shucks, homegrown Guthrie given to fits of rage when pressured to shake his ideals), Robert Getchell's well-written dialogue (though he builds supporting actors up with such pathos that it's a shame when he consistently dumps them to focus on Guthrie), and the perfect dusty, sun-baked work of the gold standard of cinematographers, Haskell Wexler. Ashby, a hack director for most of his career (he frequently let his actors, such as Warren Beatty in "Shampoo", Ruth Gordon in "Harold And Maude" and Jack Nicholson in "The Last Detail", rule the roost) brings a fine looseness to the film, stuffing it with casual, endearing observations of Texans and Okies in odd short snippets. (A scene between Carradine and Lee McLaughlin as a self-described "insane" man is particularly notable.) There's a real feeling of outrage at California's de-evolution into a '30s prison camp that Ashby would never again display. Underrated.

[oscar jubis]

Welcome back, bix171. I found your comments regarding the three films quite insightful. A Man Escaped is a personal favorite, like most of Bresson's. One of only two of his films to have what can be described as a "happy" ending. Film informed by the auteur's own experience of being interned during WWII. The idea that seems to unite all the characters is: redemption through purposeful activity. Your theme of personal courage and how others gain inspiration from it is quite fitting.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for the comments, bix--having just seen the Bob Dylan show at the Morgan Library, where Woody's guitar was one exhibit, I am interested in seeing this, which I never have. Excellent sharp, succinct reviews.

[bix171]

Oscar and Chris,

Glad to be back. Thanks for your kind words. They mean a lot to me.

Chris, where was the Dylan exhibit? What else was in it? I'm a very big Dylan fan and though I probably won't be travelling in the near term, it may be coming to Chicagoland.

[Chris Knipp]

The Dylan exhibit closed last Saturday at the Morgan Library in NYC after a run of several months. It was focused on Bob's early days coming to NYC when he was first becoming famous, 1956-1966,
"Bob Dylan's American Journey". A description of the show reads:
This is the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Bob Dylan's formative early career. The exhibition examines this critical ten-year period by charting Dylan's transformation from folk troubador to rock innovator. The exhibit, which includes works from Morgan's Dylan manuscripts and other material given to the Morgan from 1997 to 1999 by collector George Hecksher, follows Dylan's personal and artistic development from his teenage years in Hibbing, Minnesota, to early live performances at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It incorporates historic facts, handwritten lyrics and letters, instruments, rare memorabilia and photographs-and interpretive films featuring rare performance footage and interviews with Dylan and other artists. Listening stations feature selections from several albums of the period covered by the exhibit. The Morgan Library is the only probably site for the show. The NYTImes review (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/arts/music/29dyla.html?ex=1317182400&en=51dce1293a276370&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss) reveiw hopefully will link here and you can get a good description of what you missed.

[bix171]

I was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in July of '05 and they attributed the dearth of Dylan material to a show they were curating the following spring (which I got a postcard about a few months later). Bummer I didn't get to see it or the exhibit you write about.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't know for sure but I suspect that a certain amount of the stuff belongs to the Morgan Library, and maybe if you applied to them they'd let you look at it. But I don't know. Maybe this will lead to other Dylan shows. There probably is a lot of material, MSS. and posters and memorabilia. It did give me the feeling of going back to that time and that was fun. I just read Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One and since I was staying in the Village near the streets Dylan lived on when he came to NYC, it was very apropos for me. And it was kind of a tradition since this time last year I bought the DVD of Scorsese's No Direction Home while in NYC and watched it. Another thing featured in the Morgan Library exhibition was the documentary Don't Look Back, with some accompanying documents, possibly an outtake. That reminded me what a great document that is and made me want to see it all the way through another time.

[bix171]

Warren Beatty's directorial debut (he shares duties with Buck Henry) is an engaging screwball comedy perfectly matched with the 70s' rise of the auteur (and with his next film, 1981's "Reds" he would be confirmed as one). Though the film has that flat, one-dimensional feel of the big budget movies being put out at the time primarily by Paramount ("The Godfather" films being an exception here) and Universal, it maximizes a sharp screenplay by Elaine May and Beatty (with uncredited work by Robert Towne) and an excellent comic cast. Everything about it is delightful (except Dave Grusin's godawful score) but it's the crack timing of Dyan Cannon's hysteria and Charles Grodin's double-takes that provide the belly laughs.

[bix171]

I've posted my comments in that thread if anyone's interested. Unfortunately, I don't know how to create a link from here to there (but I'd be interested to learn if someone cares to show me).

[oscar jubis]

Thank you for your contributions. Keep 'em coming!

http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/misc.php?s=&action=bbcode

Read section called URL Hyperlinking

[Chris Knipp]

The Cooler (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1219&highlight=cooler)

[bix171]

MIchael Powell's 1937 elegaic tribute to the dying communities of the Shetland Islands is impossible to watch without being profoundly moved at both the plight of the declining age-old families and the stunning rocky landscape shot with both immediacy and granduer (by three separate cameramen but clearly guided by Powell's peerless eye). It's a more direct approach Powell takes here (there isn't as much of the warm wit evident is so many of his films) and the intense personal grief he invests in depicting an island people being worn away by natural selection is frequently overwhelming and almost too much to bear. (The superimposed ghostly images of the inhabitants as their lives erode is heartbreakingly devastating and a birth midway through the film accompanied by a Scottish lullabye is beyond words.) I spent the second half of the film sobbing and I defy you not to as well. A masterpiece from (along with Billy Wilder) my favorite filmmaker.

[oscar jubis]

I'm also a big fan of Michael Powell. Among British filmmakers, the only one who might be superior to Powell is Hitch. But I've seen all of the master of suspense's movies and I have yet to watch several films by Powell, including The Edge of the World. I plan to purchase the superior UK dvd release of the film by the British Film Institute. Here's a comparison of the American and UK dvd releases: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare2/edgeoftheworld.htm
It includes some nice screen captures.

[bix171]

Oscar,

You know, the comparison between Powell and Hitchcock is apt. Their wits are, I feel, remarkably similar. I remember dreading watching "The Red Shoes" (the first Powell film I'd seen), thinking it would be dull and dry and was delighted to find him to be funny and fast-paced--and reminded me almost exactly of Hitchcock.

I think Powell had a similar facination with women and their passion but was not as afraid of them as Hitchcock appeared to be; in fact, Powell seems almost celebratory of them. The use of Deborah Kerr in 3 separate roles to 3 separate ends in "The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp" is unique for its time; the hothouse lust in "Black Narcissus" fairly reeks off the screen; and Moira Shearer's fragility in "The Red Shoes" is handled with an appreciation of her delicacy. Only Wendy Hiller in "I Know Where I'm Going!" seems to get her comeuppance but, even there, that might be more as a result of England's class system and not her femininity.

As far as sheer beauty of filmmaking is concerned, I think Powell's only peer in his time is John Ford. Both used black and white, shadow and depth of vision to create landscapes so intense they seemed to be in color; and when they did move into Technicolor, their visuals were so overwhelmingly saturated they seems like paintings that haven't quite dried. It's still amazing that "Black Narcissus" was shot on a soundstage.

[bix171]

http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1517&perpage=15&pagenumber=2

If this link was not ceated, well, you can find my comments there and, in the meantime, I'll keep trying to create links. If it does work, thanks, Oscar.

[Chris Knipp]

That takes us to the page just fine. I don't know exactly how to link directly to a specific post myself.

[oscar jubis]

Your welcome, bix. I like the things you say about Powell heroines, but you'd have to elaborate about Hitch appearing to be afraid of women. John Ford's films will give me pleasure and edification until the day I die. It was hard for me to believe Black Narcissus was not shot on location.

[Chris Knipp]

Raoul Peck's Lumumba (2000). In French. Netflix DVD.

A very depressing but thought-provoking film with a brilliant, intense performance by the lead, Eriq Ebouaney as Patrice Lumumba, who suffered a gruesome end after serving only nine months in the newly independent Congo in early 1961. There isn't a lot about how Lumumba became Lumumba, but the film richly details the independence struggle and the chaotic early days of the country once freed of Belgian control.

But the Belgian cadres and commanders of the Congolese military did not leave then, and this led to revolts. Lumumba expelled the general, and that led to chaos. The largest and most resource-rich province, Katanga, headed by Moïse Tshombe, ceded from the union, and further chaos followed. The remaining Belgians appear as hostile and not interested in helping out. The film begins and ends with the incineration of Lumumba's chopped-up body by Belgian white men, along with bodies of a couple other associates who were tortured, beaten and shot witih him. Pretty ugly stuff.

Eriq Ebouaney, who looks exactly like Lumumba in the film, gives a riveting performance, but ironically one without the charisma and charm exuded by Forest Whitiker as the wicked Idi Amin in this year's Last King of Scotland. Lumumba as seen here is intensely driven, even grim, though he has a few smiles and even a moment of uproarious laughter in a prison cell. He emerges as a brave and fearless man defeated by circumstance: he says, he arrived a few years too soon. There are few personal moments. No intimate scene with his wife till 52 minutes into the film. I'd have liked to see the early life of the man sketched in a bit more detail. Peck seems as relentless and driven as his subject. Good evocations of the turmoil but an unvaried intensity may become wearing to the viewer.

"His [Peck's] first attempt at exploring Lumumba's story on film was through the documentary, Lumumba - Death of a Prophet which he directed in 1991. The film was awarded the Procirep Prize at the Festival du Réel in Paris and Best Documentary at the Montreal Film Festival in 1992."--FrenchCultur.org. Peck is of Haitian origin and came to the Congo with his father, a teacher sent there to work, in 1963. Before this film he made a documentary about Lumumba.

The more critical of the French press reviews felt Peck was too stolid and preachy in his approach and was overwhelmed in his attempt to render the chaos of the new Congolese government; they found the film more edifying than alive. There is something in that, but it outlines most of the events extremely clearly.

[Chris Knipp]

Rodolphe Marconi: The Last Day (Le dernier jour, 2004). In French. Netflix DVD.

Another nice little recent film from France that lacked the wattage to get into American theaters. People will look at it now, because lead actor Gaspard Ulliel's strong presence and savage faun look have made him a star. He has shone in such films as Téchiné's Égarés (Strayed) and the upcoming Hannibal Rising that exploit his wild features, his animalistic air of danger. He is frequently seen as frightening and independent. He is sweet as the boyfriend in A Very Long Engagement, though. The Last Day shows him off better as an actor because here he is almost always on screen, but is allowed to be hesitant, mysterious -- the essence of a film that holds back its meanings and makes us guess what's going on. Simon is delicate, thoughtful and kind, a manchild and a slightly maladroit creature who detaches by filming and photographing the world. In playing Simon, Ulliel reveals admirable restraint. He shows how an actor must use he physical equipment. His looks are striking, but what counts is that he can do such different things with them.

Simon (Ulliel) is a young arts student. On the night train to his family's Christmas party he picks up a girl who comes along and then quickly takes up with someone who seems to be Simon's former flame. Simon sleeps with (along side) her, but can't have her. And he's been left out of the know because despite being all of 18 he still isn't aware of something important about himself. Rodolphe Marconi's film is nicely understated, never dwelling on a scene too long, stingy with dialogue and scornful of flashy effects. Ulliel's delicacy is essential to these qualities. So is something inaccessible about him that helps keep his somewhat pathetic situation from ever seeming sentimental.

The Last Day is full of a dry French tact, and escapes being dreary (if only just) by the characters' composure and fortitude. Simon is an athlete (swimming, tennis), but also a good sport in everything--and despite his breathtaking ease in the pool, he has a jerky little walk. What good manners he has! He is always there in deep close-ups, bashful and quiet. Yet we feel his hurt all the more deeply because it isn't acted out. Bruno Todeschini simmers. Nicole Garcia is like a more ravaged Rampling. There's nothing not to like except the ditsy pop songs with English lyrics. Fortunately at a crucial late scene an elegant John Lewis piano solo takes over.

[oscar jubis]

I'm surprised it was not selected by Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rotterdam or Toronto. It wasn't even reviewed by Variety.

[Chris Knipp]

It does seem to have been under the radar. I should have mentioned Mélanie Laurent as the girl, and Christophe Malavoy as the head of the household, other notable actors in an impeccable cast. Europeans may be tired of paintful coming of age stories?

[Chris Knipp]

Henri-Georges Clouzot, Le Mystère Picasso 1956. Netflix DVD. Not a particularly good one: minimal visual quality and the commentary would not open.

Picasso (at 75, typically vigorous and wearing only shorts) drew or painted with colored ink on stretched canvas or paper which Clouzot's cameraman photographed from the back to show the artist doing maybe 20 paintings as they unfold from a few lines to a piece bristling with shapes and color. The assumption behind this is a little naive as Michael Atkinson said six years ago in the Voice. Atkinson called it the "bourgeois" assumption that we can see into the mind of an artistic genious by watching him at work. Well, as some of the sequences show and as the old Art News series "So-and-So Paints a Picture" showed, actually you can learn quite a lot about how an artist works out his ideas by following the sequence -- especially if he makes a lot of changes, and it is fascinating to get that kind of inside look. A slight weakness of Clouzot's film is that the process is staged, and allegedly (some say it isn't true) the paintings were even destroyed after the film was made.

Now, some of these pictures Picasso whipped off aren't particularly good. But Picasso worked fast normally. And as Motherwell once said, his unsuccessful paintings were necessary stepping-stones to the good ones. If you've looked at a lot of Picasso's work as I have, including the Skira suite of 180 drawings titled in the English edition "Picasso and the Human Comedy" of 1954,* which relates directly to some of the drawings done for the film, there won't be much "mystery" about the sequences--particularly as they relate to drawings. Toward the end though, Picasso starts doing some full-fledged paintings with overlays (I'm not at all sure how that was filmed, possibly by another method), where he really changes things all around multiple times (as he did with some of his etchings too--and looking at the sequence of them will give you very simimar information). That's more like the abstract expressionists (De Kooning, for instance) memorably chronicled in the "........Paints a Picture" Art News articles, and such metamorphoses do show the genius of the man, if not really how it works, since we're looking at, not into. I think Atkinson calls Georges Auric's music "bombastic." I found it unnecessary and turned it off and I also speeded up the sequences because I can think visually faster than this movie plods. The self-importance of the project is not untypical of other Fifties coverage of super-famous artists and it's mildly grating, but though I waited a long time, this film had to be seen.

*This book cost about $25 then. It is now worth a couple thousand dollars. Similarly the film has supposedly been declared a "national treasure" by the French. "Bourgeois" or "hagiographic" or self-important though it may be, this is an invaluable record.

[Johann]

Great Netflix reviews Chris

This site is a great archive...


My next door neighbor (apartment down the hall) has got tons of VHS tapes that he hasn't watched in years. He's been giving me 4 at a time. I watch 'em, get 4 more. Free 'o charge!
Nice to have friends like that...


52 Pick-Up

I forgot how great this little Frankenheimer film is.
Strictly adult all the way. Hookers, torture, extreme violence
The script is by Elmore Leonard and I'm sure Tarantino loves it.

Roy Scheider is being blackmailed into giving up 110 thousand dollars. Things don't go so well.
Ann-Margret is really good in it- I didn't realize how good an actress she can be.
AWESOME movie.
My fanboy rave: I watched it late at night all alone and it was wicked.


Citizen Kane

Hadn't seen it in about three years.
What can I say?
Fellini said it had "immense depth of field"
Polanski said "it was like a blueprint"
von Stroheim said "Welles' theme is small"

I say HE'S MISTER KANE!

Love it to death.
I always gagged on that silver spoon...





Alex Haley's QUEEN

Excellent T.V. miniseries, with a great cast including Martin Sheen, Ossie Davis, Ann-Margret (again) and Danny Glover.

I guess it could be a companion to ROOTS, but it stands on it's own too. It was made according to Alex Haley's wishes and it is dedicated to him.
It's about the South, black slaves and black history.
Very important film, and not just for blacks.
EVERYBODY should see it.
I was very moved by it.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, Johann. Sounds like you're getting some good opportunities, VHS is a hidden resource. Unfortunately public libraries are phasing them out -- a mistake. 52 Pickup was one of the first I saw after I "discovered" Elmore Leonard. A good one. For sure Tarantino likes this one.

Did not know about The Queen. Might be hard to find? As I said, tapes are just disappearing, and we're going to regret it because I don't think the films are all making it to DVD. I know they're not.

[Chris Knipp]

Jacques Audiard: Read My Lips/Sur mes lèvres. (2001).

The heart of the movie's original concept is the "troubling meeting of two outcasts," as one French critic puts it, the deaf, isolated, but highly competent office worker (Emmanuelle Devos) and the rough just-paroled ex-con (Vincent Cassel) who is sent to help her out in the fax room. Both find out they can get something important from the other that the other may not want to give and this leads them to be collaborators in excitement and danger -- yet the lovemaking doesn't happen till near the end. The two actors turn in terrific performances, Devos' more central and marginally more rich (and she got the César; so did the sound and the screenplay, but this was Amélie's year).

This was how I originally discovered Audiard. It was greeted as his best to date (see Frondon, Le Monde, on Allociné) and the performances of Cassel and Devos celebrated in France as a collaboration to be long remembered. Then came Audiard's next one, The Beat My Heart Skipped/De battre mon coeur s'est arrèté (2005), and that was even better and was even more of a sweep at the Césas than Amélie (8 vs. 4) So I wanted to go back and review. The Beat is more exciting and complex but both do much the same thing: combine psychological and social study with "polar noir," action crime story -- and each time with great originality, due I suspect in large part to the lively imagination of co-author Tonino Benacquista: this is a great collaboration. Audiard impresses me as one of the most focused and original of French directors today and I await his next film with great anticipation.

Devos is my favorite "new" French film actress. See her splendidly used in Arnaud Desplechin's films, My Sex Life and Kings and Queen, the recently DVD-released Gilles' Wife/La femme de Gilles (Frédéric Fonteyne, of the completely different An Affair of Love). She has been in a ton of other films I haven't seen and a couple others I have. She is beautiful but not pretty-pretty, and her more complex looks and vulnerable yet strong manner contribute to her ability to take on roles of more depth than the French cutesy or ice queen beauties. She has a small role in The Beat. There's something a little repulsive about Cassel, but also scary, wiry, energetic--he has been particularly good in Crimson Rivers/Les Rivières pourpres (2000), Brotherhood of the Wolf/Le pacte des loups (2001), and, of course, the edgy and nauseating Irréversible (2002).

Read My Lips has been criticized for ending with a "mere" crime story and dragging that part out more than the "more interesting" earlier section. True the film changes direction but it does not drag at the end nor is the relationship lost sight of.

[bix171]

Oscar Jubis wrote:
you'd have to elaborate about Hitch appearing to be afraid of women.

I think Hitchcock's treatment of women, especially from the '50s onward, which has a degre of cruelty I'd say bordered on sadism (culminating in Tippi Hedren's attack in "The Birds"), stemmed from what appears to be a mistrust of women, especially blondes. He continually puts them in harm's way and forces them to defend themselves, whether it be Grace Kelly in "Rear Window" or "Dial M For Murder" up to the aforementioned Hedren in "Marnie" and "The Birds". Whether or not this comes from his personal interactions with these women on and off the set (my understanding is Hedren, in particular, rebuffed him although I've also read he was celibate after the birth of his daughter) I can't be sure but I do think it heightens the experience of watching his films.

[Chris Knipp]

François Ozon: Time to Leave/Le temps qui reste (2005, US release 2006). Netflix DVD.

Moved to mouton's Le temps qui reste thread:

http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=16911#post16911

[Johann]

The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

Outstanding documentary on the greatest female filmmaker of all time.

Yes, she made films for the Third Reich.
No, she was not a part of the Nazi party or the Nationalists.

She was an artist.

Hitler saw her do a dance by the sea in one of her movies and fell in love with her style.
She was a "daredevil" actress, who with her mentor/partner Fanck made "mountain" films that had powerful expressive beauty and real-life danger. She was a rock climber who was subjected to really dangerous stunts (like being placed in the line of an avalanche) and learned a great deal about editing and lighting and the demands of shooting in harsh conditions.

Her time as the Fuhrer's filmmaker was actually an amazing time.

90% of the people supported Hitler before the war.
He was all about social justice and lifting Germany into a world power.
Work and Peace was the message.
Not "kill all Jews"- all of the anti-Semitic stuff came later.
It started small- people thought it was just political campaigning.
They didn't think people were serious about the Jewish hatred.
Then there was Goebbels. Then the shit hit the fan.

Triumph of the Will won Gold seals, film awards as artistic achievement par excellence. THIS WAS BEFORE THE WAR FOLKS.
1934!
Germans loved Hitler because here was a guy who was standing up and showing & telling them what to do.
People were fascinated by him.

Leni says he had a hypnotic quality about him that she feared, because she loved her freedom. She felt herself being taken away from her own beliefs whenever she was in his presence.
Dude had the charisma.

He wanted a filmmaker to make propaganda films that were not newsreels.
He wanted an artist. He got one.

Because she was considered a Nazi, someone who slept with the devil, someone whose artistic talents were null and void because of her prominent position within the Reich, she had a hard hard time making films since Triumph of the Will.
She has had every hateful thing in the universe spewed at her.
And it's tremendously unfair. This doc will show you why.
She wanted to be considered a cinematic angel actress like Dietrich.
She wanted only to be an artist.

She worked damn hard, breaking her back editing miles and miles of celluloid for a vision that she didn't really share.
It was the times. She says it was pretty much impossible to get away from Hitler and Goebbels. She says she damaged her health making those films.

She was their slave. Goebbels told her once when she was arguing with him that if she wasn't a woman he would throw her down a staircase.

She agreed to make Triumph on the grounds that it be the last film she make for the Reich.

Olympia is the film all of her critics should take a look at.

400 kilometers of film was shot. She and her crews made a groundbreaking document of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

She dug holes in the ground to contrast the athletes with the sky, she had underwater cameras for the high divers, she had Hot Air Balloons to get aerial shots!

The woman was a genius.

See this amazing doc by Ray Muller to see what I mean.

I've only scratched the surface of what's in this profile of this incredible (deep-sea diving at 91!) German Goddess.

[bix171]

Chris, I'm sorry. I didn't read as carefully as I should've.

Johann wrote:

Not "kill all Jews"- all of the anti-semitic stuff came later.

Um, have you read "Mein Kampf"?

[Chris Knipp]

Chris Knipp wrote:

Not "kill all Jews"- all of the anti-semitic stuff came later.

Um, have you read "Mein Kampf"?Whoa, there!

That was NOT my post! It was from Johann. Under the circumstances I would appreciate it if you would delete that post and repost it with the right name on it, not mine. These are not my views on Leni Riefenstahl or on the Nazis, at all.

[Johann]

Ooh, we've hit a nerve!

The "anti-Semitic stuff came later" is in the context of "later" as in the sheer horror of the Jew persecution.

I'm talking about BEFORE the concentration camps.

BEFORE the horrors that Hitler ordered.

The anti-Semitic sentiment didn't explode until later.
The German people thought it was POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING.

How little did they know...


What are your views on Riefenstahl, Chris?
I'm insanely curious.

[cinemabon]

You can hardly call Leni Riefenstahl a documentarian. Her work for the Nazi Party only furthered the view Hitler should be considered some man of the people. Nothing could be further from the truth. As with all propoganda, it only serves to further the political views of those behind the work, and divides people along party (ethnic, cultural, religious) lines with the premise that anyone opposing those views must be against the government, anti-patriotic.

Take Fox News. This isn't news. They don't have sources. They spout opinion all day long without facts (such as the recent 'scandal' about Obama - completely untrue and unsubstantiated). The Nazi's would be proud of Fox News. I changed my sign off (below) for a reason. I've grown tired of those people who keep stating we are embolding the enemy when we criticize the President's plan.

In a democracy, "the supreme power is vested in the people." It seems to me that the people voted overwhelmingly last fall to change that policy. Bush may be untouchable now as President, but any man in that office can be impeached. Take those embolding words to the bank. And put Riefenstahl back in the ground with her anti-semitic ways. Her only genius was in dying, and none too soon as far as I'm concerned.

[Johann]

Have you ever heard a single anti-Semitic thing come out of Riefenstahl's mouth?

Give me a quote from her.

Post a quote of her saying something against the Jews.

Give me a direct quote. There is absolutely NO record of her saying ANYWHERE anything anti-Semitic.

Come on- back up what you say.

Point to the quote of Riefenstahl's that is pure hatred for Jews.

That's right- there is none. No history book, no film has her saying or doing anything against Jewish people.

[Johann]

Riefenstahl made films for the Nazi party, yes.

But you realise that hindsight is 20/20?

In the doc she regrets terribly making Triumph, but you guys are completely forgetting the times.

The early thirties in Germany was a time BEFORE the war.
Optimism was the vibe of the day, a new frontier for Germany.

The absolute horror that was to follow came after Riefenstahl worked for the Reich- after she made the films.

AFTER AFTER AFTER!

Am I getting it across here?

Leni had NOTHING to do with shaping the government or the Reich's policies. People love to dump on her and lump her in with the Nazi's. She doesn't hate Jews, she was no architect of ANYTHING anti-Semitic. Prove me wrong. And don't give me "she was in bed with Hitler! She was in deep with the Nazi's!"
Yeah, we know that.
What else you got?

Are we talking about Leni Riefenstahl here or are we talking about Hitler?

They are two separate stories, folks...

The fact is she wasn't a Nazi. She is asked point blank in the doc:
What is your visual idea of a fascist
She says she doesn't know.
She says: The Hitler salute? The seig heil?

She was employed by Hitler to make films. She did.
That's where it ends.
She doesn't endorse the Nazi's, never was a Nazi, she talks in the doc of how her views about Hitler changed when she started hearing about the sick shit he was perpetrating, and how the whole bottom fell out.

[bix171]

Johann wrote:

The anti-semitic sentiment didn't explode until later.
The German people thought it was POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING.

How little did they know...


You act as if anti-Semitism (you're supposed to capitalize the S, Johann) didn't exist in Germany before Hitler's rise. Wrong, very, very wrong. Just look at Richard Wagner, whise anti-Semitism is virulent but also a product of the century in which he lived (the century before Nazism). And Wagner is but one example, it's just the first that comes to mind.

You also imply that a nation is so gullible as to see anti-Semitism as "POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING". Give me a break. While I will admit that Nazi propaganda was a clever conditioning of the German people, it was a conditioning for the Final Solution; the hatred had already begun, crystalizing with Hitler's ascent to power.

Frankly, as a Jew whose parents survived the Holocaust, I'm a little offended by your rather flippant remarks. ("Dude had the charisma." "Ooh, we've hit a nerve!") Your history is specious at best, if not blatantly incorrect, and the manner in which you present yourself tells me you aren't thinking things through before you write them or you aren't policing yourself well enough. I shudder to think that either of them might not be the case.

[Johann]

Shudder away Bix.

I may be flip, but I'm also right.

Of course anti-Semitism was there. I'm not saying it wasn't.
I'm saying it didn't EXPLODE until later.

Am I wrong?

[Johann]

Are you looking for threadbare weaknesses in what I write?

I think before I write, even if that doesn't appear to be the case.

This discussion should be about Leni Riefenstahl.

I'm not a historian. I write from my heart.

[bix171]

Johann wrote:

Shudder away Bix.

I may be flip, but I'm also right.

Of course anti-Semitism was there. I'm not saying it wasn't.
I'm saying it didn't EXPLODE until later.

Am I wrong?

Right about what? Explode later? When is later? Hitler took power in 1933 and the persecution began immediately. Kristallnacht was in 1938, before he invaded Poland. Is there some sort of demarcation point where cruelty begins just because mass executions have begun? Is death the only explosion worth talking about?


This discussion should be about Leni Riefenstahl.

This is a quote from your original post:

"90% of the people supported Hitler before the war.
He was all about social justice and lifting Germany into a world power.
Work and Peace was the message.
Not "kill all Jews"- all of the anti-Semitic stuff came later.
It started small- people thought it was just political campaigning.
They didn't think people were serious about the Jewish hatred.
Then there was Goebbels. Then the shit hit the fan."

No mention of Riefenstahl there. Just some stuff about Hitler being all about "Work and Peace" and blaming anti-Semitism on Goebbels.

You're right, Johann: you're not a historian. And I don't think your heart's in the right place.

[Johann]

Later is HOLOCAUST LATER.

That "stuff" about Hitler is in the fucking documentary.

The documentary is about RIEFENSTAHL.

You zeroed in on true points found in the documentary.

I apologize that I wasn't writing up to your holy standards of historical accuracy.

You got a bone to pick, but it ain't with me.

[Johann]

The seeds of Jewish hatred was there before the Holocaust- I'm not disputing that at all.

All I meant was that pre-war Germany was about Work and Peace, social change, lifting Germany up. That's it.

Anti-Semitism was obviously and undeniably there, long before the Holocaust. But it was the Holocaust and the sheer horror of what Hitler was doing that woke everybody up to what a mistake it was to be behind this man- kinda like what's happening with Bush now. The people were realizing what was happening and it was dreadful.

Just ask Leni Riefenstahl.

[Johann]

By the way, I'm also aware of the "culpability" factor of Riefenstahl's "involvement" with the Nazi's.

I'm not so naive to think that she couldn't have known what powers she was dealing with, but at the same time that documentary put the hook in me.

If she's lying through her teeth about everything she says then I am one sorry ass mofo.

I believe her.

Maybe she's a greater actress than I can ever know?

I just respond as best I can.

There are some shady parts of her past that do not add up: dining with Himmler?!, employing camp detainees for a film that were then executed?!

[bix171]

Johann wrote:

I apologize that I wasn't writing up to your holy standards of historical accuracy.

Quit being so insulting both to your audience and to yourself. Your foot keeps going deeper into your mouth with every e-mail.

You got a bone to pick, but it ain't with me.

On the contrary, it most certainly is, as it would be with anyone making such inflammatory remarks.

You zeroed in on true points found in the documentary.

If the comments I've quoted of yours are truly from the documentary (which I have not seen) then either the facts are being misquoted or the film is wrong-headed. I suppose now I'll have to check it out to see which might be correct but I do so with the memories of thinking "Triumph Of The Will" (seen in college thirty years ago) and "Olympia" (on public TV, also at about the same time) were exhausting. In fact, I recall "Olympia" reminding me of "Wide World Of Sports".

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, this is a hot topic, and I didn't want to be credited with making any provocative remarks about the Nazis. Riefenstahl in my opinion, going largely by the film but also by her beautiful photos of the Nuba people (who certainly weren't blond and blue-eyed--though the primitivism of her celebration of their bodies is also a bit suspect), was a remarkable photographer and filmmaker -- and an opportunist and shady character -- who like many who operated during the Nazis preferred not to talk about that later on. She had a long life after WWII, doing the Nuba series, and then taking a boyfriend 40 years her junior who collaborated in a series of underwater photos done scuba diving in her 70's, also remarkable for a woman of an advanced age. It is troubling to think that sometimes artists are not nice or admirable people or at the very least of dubious politics. The documentary is worth seeing and debating her relationship to Hitler, etc., but it's been too long since I saw it to comment in detail. Wikipedia:
She became a photographer and was later the first to photograph rock star Mick Jagger and his wife Bianca as a couple holding hands after they were married, as they were both admirers. Jagger told Riefenstahl he had seen Triumph of the Will at least 15 times. The article tells us she published an underwater photo book on her 100th birthday. I think one can argue that her aesthetics of the body developed in the Triumph of the Will film expresses a fascist sensibility. I understand Richard Wagner's ideas were none too democratic or egalitarian; J.S. Bach was a grumpy dad...etc. I wouldn't say every artist or writer or fiilmmaker I like is somebody I admire as a person or would want to even meet. Riefenstahl is a pretty extreme case of that kind of thing. Leni is too interesting and accomplished a figure to dismiss simply because of her questionable associations, but there's no way to excuse her either. "The Wonderful and Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl"-- the moral ambiguity of her achievement is expressed in the title of Ray Müller's 1994 film that started this discussion. Take a look at the whole Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl) on Leni Riefenstahl for more information. It contains some things that a later film has revealed and facts I didn't know from Müller.

[bix171]

Julie Christie won an Oscar for her role as a young jet-setting model in the developing world of mod England, circa the mid-60s. As screenwriter Frederic Raphael envisions her, and as Christie plays her, she's an innocent naif getting windblown from relationship to relationship, casually destroying families in the process while trying to find true happiness, but Raphael's script is too conflicted about her to either embrace or condemn her--there seems an indifference to providing her any depth, preferring to play out the film's real drama in the reactions of her male suitors, played by a psuedo-intellectual Dirk Bogarde and an effectively slimy Laurence Harvey (who steals the show). Raphael does score some points in his caustic humiliation of Britain's upper class, shown appearing to care for the Third World's poverty but coming off as merely posturing. (The opening credits--in which a large advertisment highlighting Christie's face is whitewashed over a poster of a malnourished African child--is in fact the film's cleverest moment.) Directed very professionally--without a trace of blood--by John Schlesinger; just think of what "Darling" could've become in the hands of Richard Lester. Not a bad film--in fact, I find myself recommending it--but not what it could have been.

[Johann]

Hey Bix- you jumped all over something that was in the film.

I wouldn't have said it unless I could point to something that gave me that perspective.

How about you quit being a reactionary?

FRANKLY, I don't think there's anyhing inflamatory about what I said.

Hitler DID have the charisma, I HAVE hit a nerve.

I respect your sensibility to the subject matter- I feel for your parents. I feel for anybody who lived during that horrific time.

But don't overreact- there are two sides to every story.

That documentary provides a view of someone who was living through that history- by all means check it out.

I would love to discuss it further, Chris is right.

You cannot dismiss Riefenstahl as "just a propaganda filmmmaker".
She was an artist of considerable merit who did other things.
She also has some shadiness to her life that needs to be addressed.

[Johann]

Is that it?
That's all anybody wants to say?

Well let me expand on what I said.

The whole thrust of my argument for Riefenstahl was that she worked for Hitler before the war. When optimism was the rage.

When she made Olympia Hitler attended the games but he didn't care one iota about it.

Do you think he wanted to see a black man beat Germans?
Would he have enjoyed that type of spectacle?

Do you think he would've approved of Leni filming the Nuba tribe?

If she was such a Nazi then wouldn't she be towing the line?

I'll say it again: she agreed to make Triumph of the Will only if it was the last film for the Reich.

Before she met Hitler was she anti-Semitic? No.
When she was in the mountains shooting her daredevil stunts, was she secretly thinking of exterminating Jews? No.

Is there anything on record of her saying or doing anything that proves she shared Hitler's views? No.

Are major combat operations over, Bix?

You got something to say about Riefenstahl or do you just want to attack my style?

[bix171]

Johann wrote:

Are major combat operations over, Bix?

You got something to say about Riefenstahl or do you just want to attack my style?

No. Now that this has devolved into acrimony and insults, I'll just withdraw from this conversation. Thanks for writing!

[cinemabon]

I simply fell in love with Julie Christie... in 70mm. This definitely was her year. She appeared in the two top films of the year, this and Dr. Zhivago, both presented in the large screen format. Of course, Schlesinger (nominated for Darling) went on to win the best director Oscar for Midnight Cowboy, shot only a few small budget features before he tackled the big budget, Darling.

Sitting in the State theater, with its 100 plus foot screen and watching Darling probably twenty or more times, I fell in love with Julie Christie. To me, she is one of the great stars from the 1960's. She had incredible screen presence, and could recite the telephone book beautifully. (Remember Far from the Madding Crowd, Heaven can Wait, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Shampoo, etc???) Unfortunately, she fell into obscurity after the 1970's only to be resurrected recently in Neverland. When Zhivago came out, we all fell in love with Julie, as she clearly became everyone's darling being the notorious, Laura.

Who can forget Zhivago, clutching his heart as the gorgeous Christie, just feet away, walks down the street oblivious to the fact her greatest love dropped dead right behind her. I fell a long time ago to Julie Christie. See her at the zenith of her career in Darling, for which she rightly won the year's top honor as Best Actress of the Year. (Omar Shariff, by the way, got robbed that year!)

I goofed: Only Zhivago was presented in 70mm. I forgot that Darling was shot almost docu style in Black and white, despite its ads saying, "Darling... in dazzling color!" Sorry... anyway, watch both.

[Chris Knipp]

Like the Samuel Johnson quote, cinemabon--one of my own favorites.

Johann---Read the Wikipedia article about Leni. Here are some lines from it:


Her most famous works are documentary propaganda films for the German Nazi Party. . .

Triumph of the Will was a documentary glorifying Hitler and widely regarded as one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever produced. It is generally regarded as a masterful, epic, innovative work of documentary filmmaking. Because it was commissioned by the Nazi party and used as propaganda, however, critics have said it is nearly impossible to separate the subject from the artist behind it.. . .

After World War II, she spent four years in a French detention camp. There were accusations she had used concentration camp inmates on her film sets, but those claims were not proven in court. Being unable to prove any culpable support of the Nazis, the court called her a sympathizer. In later interviews Riefenstahl maintained that she was "fascinated" by the Nazis but politically naïve and ignorant about the war crimes of which they were accused by critics. . . .

The History Channel, on its sister channel, History International, released a documentary entitled, Hitler's Women: Leni Riefensthal. In it, the accusation is made that Riefenstahl was acutely aware that her films were propaganda. They point to evidence such as the fact that Hitler had a sit-down discussion between Riefenstahl and Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels at her personal German villa, as seen in this picture (Registation Required), to resolve differences the two were having which were causing strife in Hitler's early regime. Even more damning are the film clips of Riefenstahl dining with Goebbels and Himmler, and other top men of both the Brownshirt and SS branches of NSDAP, intercut with interviews with German historians and WWII scholars questioning how any one could appear at state dinners with top Nazi officials (eating at the high table with them, no less) and be completely unaware of what politics they were supporting. Furthering the connection, they cite the fact that Riefenstahl sent a celebratory telegram to Hitler after the successful military campaign in France, "Your deeds exceed the power of human imagination. They are without equal in the history of mankind. How can we ever thank you?. . .

Lastly, they detail interviews with actual Gypsy survivors of the Holocaust, who refute Riefensthal's claims that the concentration camp victims she used for filming were not killed [4]. . . .

The documentary comes to the conclusion that Riefenstahl suffered from a deep denial of her actual culpability, to the point that she even began to believe her own lies regarding her innocence.



Did Riefenstahl get a raw deal when her efforts to get funding for further films after the war were shunned? As the article implies, it had become hard to separate her from her work, her work from Hitler, and Hitler from the extermination camps he created. This is a little bit more than guilt by association given such evidence as her congratulation of Hitler for the defeat of France. About anti-Semitism however there seems to be no clearcut evidence, only the suspicion that exists for so many Germans: that she knew what was going on, she heard Hitler's speeches, she heard him denounce the Jews, and she chose to repress this knowledge or deny it later on. Nonetheless she was a remarkable filmmaker and photographer.

[oscar jubis]

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply. I've been wanting to participate in several discussions. And I wish I could find the time to post longer opinions about some outstanding films out there. I am currently attending press screenings for the Miami International Film Festival (March 2nd-11th). I'm attending roughly two screenings a day and writing reviews. At this rate, I should surpass the 54 films I reviewed in my coverage of the 2006 fest. I will start posting them in about a week or so.

The two best films I've seen recently are Children of Men and 4. The former has the best mise-en-scene and art direction of any English-language film released in '06. The film is the perfect antidote to the current practice of covering a scene with multiple cameras and slicing-and-dicing the footage like an MTV video. Masterful long takes reminiscent of Ophuls and Sokurov prevail. And half the story is told visually, with the script sometimes seeming as an aide to the images. So it might seem slight if you're not watching closely. You can watch it with the sound turned off and the thing still makes sense. Silent film masters would approve.

4 is a Russian film with segments that recall Tarkovsky and Tarr, but it's a challenging, despairing, original, groundbreaking work of art. A second viewing was most rewarding. It received very good reviews, but none (not even J. Hoberman's) does justice to it. It's available on dvd. And I eventually found an essay in Sensesofcinema that truly enriches the experience of viewing it.

Originally posted by bix171
I think Hitchcock's treatment of women, especially from the '50s onward, which has a degre of cruelty I'd say bordered on sadism (culminating in Tippi Hedren's attack in "The Birds"), stemmed from what appears to be a mistrust of women, especially blondes. He continually puts them in harm's way and forces them to defend themselves, whether it be Grace Kelly in "Rear Window" or "Dial M For Murder" up to the aforementioned Hedren in "Marnie" and "The Birds". Whether or not this comes from his personal interactions with these women on and off the set (my understanding is Hedren, in particular, rebuffed him although I've also read he was celibate after the birth of his daughter) I can't be sure but I do think it heightens the experience of watching his films.

I know very little about Hitchcock's personal life. Your comments are very interesting and worthy of consideration. I wonder though if simply from the 50s onwards, cinema allowed depiction of characters, both male and female, which were more flawed. It was a time when mainstream society developed an interest in Freudian psychology and films featured a number of deeply flawed, neurotic, even mad characters. Notice how Hitchcock's male protagonists were treated, so to speak, in films like Vertigo and Psycho.

Regarding Leni Riefenstahl and The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, here's a review by the excellent critic Jonathan Rosenbaum for your consideration:

A fascinating if irritating and ultimately unsatisfactory 1993 German documentary by Ray Müller about the remarkable filmmaker whose work provided Nazi Germany with its greatest propaganda. It's important to know that this film was made at Riefenstahl's own instigation, clearly designed to accompany her then recently published autobiography, and that she had veto power over who would be interviewed (don't expect to see Susan Sontag here). Consequently this is more often self-portrait than portrait; like Hitler in Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, she's presented as a fully formed deity without family background or ideology save a reverence for beauty and strength. Admittedly, compared to the Nazi industrialists who went unpunished, she has suffered disproportionately for her Nazi associations (albeit less than any Jew who was gassed), and she deserves full recognition as an extraordinary woman; even in her early 90s she remained a courageous deep-sea diver, as the film shows. But at 182 minutes the film has only a few skeptical asides, and it shirks certain basic historical facts--allowing its subject to insist, for instance, that Triumph of the Will was a "straight" documentary with no allusion to all the carefully crafted studio retakes. John Simon's gushing, unscholarly review of her autobiography in the New York Times, a literary equivalent to Reagan's Bitburg speech, concluded that Riefenstahl "may have compromised her humanity. But her artistic integrity, never." If you agree with Simon that artistic integrity has nothing to do with humanity, this is the movie you've been waiting for. Incidentally, the film's stupid title was coined strictly for the Anglo-American market; the original German title translates as "Leni Riefenstahl: The Power of Images."

[Chris Knipp]

Interesting point about the title of the Riefenstahl documentary, which of course suggests a hedging of bets to paliate a doubtful audience--but while Rosenbaum himeslf is fair to Riefenstahl, he goes a little overboard in implying the film is a promo job for her. Even if she may have had some control over it, it leaves you with plenty of serious doubts about her innocence of collaboration; the stuff about the concentration camp inmates taken out temporarily to work in a R film is there, for instance, and so is the dining with demon generals. Anyone who really cared would need to see other material, including the History Channel films alluded to by the Wikipedia piece--but I don't think Riefenstahl's dubious involvement in the Nazi propaganda campaign is left in any doubt and it remains true that she took a beating for it afterward and had remarkable accomplishments in silent film and photography before and after during an active lifetime that lasted 101 years. It's always interesting to see what Rosenbaum has had to say, but I'd be interested in your own opinion of the film, Oscar, if you have one.

It's true Children of Men has some remarkable long tracking shots and crowd scenes, but some of those scenes lack credibility as does the whole story with its many unexplained points. The dystopian future has pushed a lot of buttons for people who are worried, and resultingly gotten credit for a profundity and relevance that it quite lacks. I think it's one of the year's most overrated movies. We could debate that on the thread devoted to it

http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1887.

[Johann]

Huge thanks to Chris and Oscar for adding something worthwhile.

Chris, what you posted from Wiki is pretty accurate.

Triumph absoultely glorifies Hitler- that was what she was commissioned to do. In that respect, she did her job extremely well- too well for some. But like I said, hindsight is 20/20.

She must've known what she was doing, but at the same time, she was under the thumbs of Nazis. The way I see it (and I could be wrong- I'm willing to be wrong here) she looked at it as "well, I've got a prominent position, I'm being giving free reign to be an artist, why not try something?"

I believe the Wiki quote where it says she was politically naive and ignorant of the war crimes they were accused of.

After seeing the doc (and it does seem like a self-portrait- she overrides Ray Muller in a few arguments- she demands answers to questions that he cannot answer) I am convinced she was CRIMINALLY NAIVE in her dealings with the top people in the Reich. Criminally naive.

She was caught up in a horrible time that she repeatedly regrets in the film. Muller tells her that the world is looking for an apology from her. This is where denial comes into play.
She says "where does my guilt lie? I've suffered enough" (I'm paraphrasing because I gave the tapes back to the public library)

Please watch the film guys- we might be able to come to a better understanding of one another's posts if we've all got the film on our minds

[Chris Knipp]

I guess we're coming to more of an agreement now.

I just wanted to add one thing--that I'd agree with Rosenbaum in saying the Muller documentary is "ultimately unsatisfactory"--because it needs to get to the bottom of more than it does, I guess. It disturbed me too, but I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time. I had put off seeing it for a while because I thought the woman would be distasteful. She sort of is, but whether "criminally naive" oir not, (don't think she came to acknowledge that afterward, Johann--she doesn't repudiate anything but stonewalls as I recall), her career is troubling. She was not under compulsion to make the propaganda films. Making propaganda films for any government is a dubious eneterprise to get involved in, even if the government isn't reprehensible, and even if you produce masterpices. They're tainted masterpieces--and moreover they're masterpieces that people often find heavy and boring. Fascism's self-worship is a lugubrious enterprise. But Riefenstahl's life was a remarkable one.

[Johann]

I think she might've been saving her own skin by sending that telegram where she's blowing sunshine up Hitler's ass.
She talks about it in the documentary.

I mean he could've killed her at any time for any reason.

She had to be a "sympathizer" or else she probably would've had a pistol to her head in short order.

Think in terms of Polanski's The Pianist or Schindler's List- life and death was a silk thread thing.

Her artistry is what matters though.

For all of her naive crimes, she was still (in my opinion only) the greatest female filmmaker of all time.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
he goes a little overboard in implying the film is a promo job for her.
Rosenbaum says it's "more often autobiography than biography", which is more subtle than calling it a "promo job".

I'd be interested in your own opinion of the film, Oscar, if you have one.
Of course I have an opinion since I've watched the doc, albeit not recently. Riefenstahl is a highly interesting subject for a documentary and the clips from her films leave no doubt as to her photographic skills. The controversies regarding the extent of her sympathizing and collaborating with the nazis make it compelling. Yet there's a lack of rigor, such as leaving out well known facts as pointed out by Rosenbaum, that render the film less than definitive.

It's true Children of Men has some remarkable long tracking shots and crowd scenes, but some of those scenes lack credibility as does the whole story with its many unexplained points. I think it's one of the year's most overrated movies. We could debate that on the thread devoted to it

What does "overrated" mean? That a lot of critics loved it and you didn't. I decided it would take at least a couple of hours to write a review that does justice to the film. I would have to manage to put into words what the film explains visually, which is time consuming. It would take just as long to retort to everything in your review with which I disagree. I regret not having the time because I think you missed a lot of what the film explains via mise-en-scene and art direction. Children of Man is basically a fictional projection of what the world could potentially become in 20 years if governments continue to declare pre-emptive wars, and pass Patriot Acts, and acquire nuclear weapons, and disregard Geneva Conventions, and erect border walls, and lie about weapons of mass destruction, and encourage "patriotism", etc. It's richly imagined, and consistently awe-some filmmaking.

*My vote for "greatest female filmmaker of all time" goes to... Agnes Varda.

[Chris Knipp]

Yet there's a lack of rigor, such as leaving out well known facts as pointed out by Rosenbaum, that render the film less than definitive.
What well known facts are those?

It's not really accurate to say a softened documentary is "autobiography" more than "biography." But such a "biography"woiuld be a a "promo job" and it would be a fake. If Muller's film is such a fake, then it is a lot worse than we have been saying. Maybe it is. ButI don't think even Rosenbaum is implying really that the film was made entirely by and for the pleasure of Riefenstahl.

As for Children of men, overrated means more admired than it quite deserves. It isn't about me. I'm not the only person who has found serious faults in its narrative.. See what your pal Rosenbaum says about it. Only he thinks the remarkable evocations of dystopian future and the technical accomplishments of the earlier parts redeem the later degeneration into an actioner. I think the weakness was there from the beginning in the unexplained and patchy premise.

[cinemabon]

When it comes to women making a contribution to cinema, one needs to broaden the palate before creating a picture... certainly in America, you had Ida Lupino, one of the very first female directors. In China, Esther Eng and Tang Shu-Sheun were early pioneers. Certainly Italian director, Len Wurtmuller would have to be considered since she had a tremendous impact on cinema (far greater than any documentarian). If its documentarians, Michelle Parkerson's name should be mentioned as should commercial filmmaker Penny Marshall.

I'm sure I'm leaving out many great female artists (behind the camera) whose work has carved out a place in cinema history with far greater impact than Riefenstahl. No one outside of Germany ever saw her work until after the war. When I saw Triumph of the Will, I did not think, "Wow, what a great filmmaker!" I thought, "No wonder the German's were convinced Hitler was a god." She made him look good. But that formula is old and she did not invent it. Any school kid in film school knows how to cut a film to make someone look good. Many propoganda films were made during World War II. Just because someone says it's great doesn't make it that way. Glorifying the 'Aryan' race is sick, twisted, demented, and completely racists to the 'nth' degree.

And to say that a filmmaker is not aware of the material when you spend weeks creating a script, shooting and then cutting the material is being extremely naive. Let's not delude ourselves on that score.

If I sound upset or angry, it is because so many people suffered... and she did nothing to make amends after the fact. Where is the documentary about the evils of the Nazi's she made after the war?

[Johann]

DOA

Supremely rare documentary from 1980 on the punk movement.

I found this vhs tape in the garbage, of all places (long story).

Profiling the Sex-Pistols, the X-Ray Spex, Generation X, Rich Kids, Sham 69 and others, plus using cool trax from Iggy Pop (Nightclubbing, Lust for Life) this film is a great slice of anarchy.

The songs are COMPLETE performances, unlike other docs on punk music which use snippets and soundbites.

What's really cool about this film is seeing just how up in arms the establishment were over bands like the Pistols.

Now they seem almost tame, but back in the mid to late 70's this music was like an atomic bomb of annoyance to the powers that be.

There is a famous "interview" clip of Sid and Nancy where she's trying to wake Sid up- he's nodding out due to the heroin and can barely answer anybody, let alone Nancy. Vintage.

There are several clips of british "authorities" who have nothing but contempt for the Pistols and punk in general.

Not much has changed.

I reckon George Bush doesn't know jack shit about "In the Land of Hope and Glory" or "Police and Thieves".

[oscar jubis]

Great post. You obviously "get it". It's hard to convey to younger people what an art revolution feels like, because there hasn't been one for a long time. I watched DOA way way back. As a huge The Clash fan, I prefer Rude Boy, but DOA is essential. Last year's American Hardcore does a good job depicting the early 80s scene in the USA.

[Johann]

I really wanna see American Hardcore.

My current fave band is Black Flag and I love Keith Morris & his Circle Jerks, so I can't wait.

Haven't seen Rude Boy but I'm up for anything Clash-wise.

Congrats on the accreditation, btw.

You're our man in Miami Oscar. Looking forward to your reports.

[Johann]

She's Gotta Have It



Never saw Spike Lee's debut before, but I've definitely heard about it.
Fuckin' awesome movie. And I mean fuckin'!
Nola Darling is a young black woman who likes sex. A lot.
She lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the same 'hood as Mars Blackmon, a street-wise cyclist played by Spike himself.

She's sleeping with Greer, a muscle-bound "Billy Dee Motherfucker" (according to Mars) and she doesn't know which man she should commit to: Greer, Mars or Jamie.
Jamie is a guy who followed her on the street when he first laid eyes on her and they start a relationship.
So, she ends up boning all three guys at the same time.
She even has a lesbian hitting on her!

This is a great comedy- an "art film comedy" in my estimation.

It's shot in stark, beautiful black and white with one color sequence by Ernest Dickerson.
There's nudity, and there's one scene in particular that made my jaw drop: the who's pussy is this? scene.

I love this movie.
There's nudity, hilarious situations and even though it's set in the 80's, it's the good 80's, the intelligent, witty 80's.

The end credits are worth sitting through too- the clapboard "roll call" was just as funny as anything in the movie.

[Chris Knipp]

[Now in release in New York, February 2007. First seen at the 2005 NYFF at Lincoln Center in the grandeur of Alice Tully Hall. Seen again in a little auditorium at Cinema Village. It was worthy of the grandeur.]

Regular Lovers/Les amants réguliers
Philippe Garrel, France, 2005, 178 min.

CK description for the NYFF: (http://www.filmwurld.com/articles/features/nyff05/regularlovers.htm)
1968, 1969: a small group of young men take active part in the May 1968 Paris riots in this lengthy and meandering historical mood piece shot in black and white for a New Wave look that's at once fresh and nostalgic. The cataclysm ends, hopes die down, boys pair off with girls, and the hash and then the opium come out. There's a painter, a guy named Gauthier who wants to design clothes, and others. The group gravitates to the house of the wealthy Antoine (Julien Lucas) but the focus is on a budding poet and draft resister called François (Louis Garrel, the director's son, recently seen in Bertolucci's The Dreamers, who looks almost too poetic to actually be one) and an art student and sculptor, Lilie (Clotilde Hesme), who fall in love. Lilie's pledge of eternal loyalty to Francois lasts till a wealthy sculptor sponsors her and she goes off to New York, leaving her sensitive and sweet young lover shattered. The young people and the Paris interiors and exteriors (Lilie says Francois is "beautiful inside and outside") are lovely to look upon but the film requires patience and the English subtitles are the kind that burn out whenever the background is white (Chris Knipp)

Comment on seeing the NYC screening, February 2007:
. . .but this is also the kind of film that burns itself into your memory and keeps coming back. It takes you to a special place. Garrel père must know whereof he speaks, because he evokes the seminal moment of the late Sixties effortlessly. With what seem like casual gestures and details, he seems to touch on everything important, the dream of revolution, the alienation from the working class, the celebration of art and love, the depression after the excitement died down, which fades into the extremism of the Seventies, the love of clothes and music and dancing. Nothing new, perhaps, but that’s why the film doesn’t push a “period” look on us. The grainy black and white, which itself is so intense it seems to burn itself into your soul, creates a time capsule of youth that’s more universal than Carnaby Street pink and greed or paisley prints. Louis Garrel is the principled young poet, and Clotilde Hesme is the strong, independent passionate girlfriend. Philippe Garrel takes time with each moment to make it real. Even battles are boring, and the escape from them is more boring still. 90% of life is showing up and 95% is waiting for something to happen. Of course this film could be cut. The piano theme that introduces the lovers and their love keeps coming back a little too often. But the very unedited quality is quintessentially Sixties. Garrel has made a film about the Sixties that feels made in the Sixties; he’s made a film for us by making a film for himself. It would be nice to get a copy of this that had nice yellow subtitles, in French. The French DVD ought to be good; the French critics were ecstatic about this film.

Andrew O’Hehir in Salon (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/01/18/btm/) recently described Regular Lovers as “the transformative filmgoing experience of the last few months for me, but also a movie that would bore the pants and several layers of skin off many, many viewers. This kind of movie demands that we turn off the phone, stow the watch in a pocket and surrender to a sense of time that is altogether disconnected from our everyday lives. It's the same surrender demanded by old-school works of high culture, by Wagner's "Parsifal" or Brahms' Third. (And by Chinese opera, Indian classical music, Noh theater and other things I know even less about.)" Well said. Indeed this is one of those slow-burning cinematic epipahnies that may give fellow-afficianados a sense of conspiratorial intimacy and whose meaning transcends anything you can codify or analyse. Manohla Dargis called Regular Lovers "magnificent" in her review. (http://movies2.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/movies/19regu.html) . It unquestionably is. It has a truly epic quality (much in contrast to the beautiful hothouse claustrophobia of Bertolucci's The Dreamers), and I can only hope that more of the right Americans get a chance to see it on a big screen, and eventually that it gets better subtitles.

Available on French DVD. (http://www.commeaucinema.com/film=44878.html)

[Johann]

RoboCop


At first glance this movie seems kitchy, corny.

But after watching it again for the umpteenth time I think it's a great, visionary film.

Paul Verhoeven is known for his stylistic, weirdish films and this one is no exception.

The RoboCop suit design is awesome.
The action is awesome- check out the Criterion version for all of the rated X scenes. And the story is awesome.

A cop named Murphy gets killed. (not entirely...)

A technological company capitalizes after another robot cop design went berzerko.

A cyborg made of titanium, flesh and kevlar brings sweet justice to the crooks of Detroit (or Delta City- take your pick).

Lovely movie that never bores me.

[Johann]

Coffy



Cult classic from Jack Hill starring Pam Grier as a nurse who's gotta avenge her heroin addicted sister.

This film is a wild ride.
Tarantino put it in his top-ten of all-time.


This is one hell of an violent adult film.

Pimps, bitches & ho's, drugs, shotguns, hand-cannons, needles, a sexy catfight, racism, afros, sexual situations and nudity, blood, gore, torture, this is grindhouse blaxploitation at it's finest.

I'm watching Hell Up in Harlem next- the sequel to Black Caesar with Fred Williamson

[Chris Knipp]

You're in the grind house now, Johann. Welcome your reports.

[Chris Knipp]

Christian Faure: Juste une question d'amour (Just a Question of Love, 2000) (TV) 88 mins. Netflix DVD.

Laurent (a vibrant Cyrille Thouvenin) is a 23-year-old agricultural student in Lille (with a passion for poetry) who knows he's gay but lets his parents think he's straight and that his roommate Carole (a sweet Caroline Veyt) is his future wife. He's held in this bind by the fact that a gay cousin, Marc, who was like a brother to him, came out only to wind up dying rejected by his parents, an example of in-family homophobia that seems to have been all too well accepted by his own mother and father. Laurent has been on a downward spiral in school ever since Marc's death. Marc's parents are around at family parties, the mother a basket case on tranquilizers, the father stolid and still unforgiving. This angers Laurent, but the trouble is that his mom and dad, who run a pharmacy, are very dear to him. He loves his parents; he loves family; and he loves kids. But he's stuck in a charade. It's already hurting Carole, who's more than a little in love with him, though she knows full well about his sexuality.

All this has to change when Laurent is attached as a trainee (stagère) to a nursery and lab run by the slightly older Cédric (sexy, soulful Stéphan Guérin-Tillié) and they fall in love.The more grown up and independent Cédric is impatient with Laurent's playing the "little hetero to mom and dad." When he came out to his mother Emma (Eva Darlan) 11 years earlier on the death of his dad, Cédric said she could "take it or leave it." Laurent's pretense is exploded from an unexpected source. The film takes us sympathetically through the pain of Laurent's parents and Emma's efforts to help.

The special virtue of Just a Question of Love is its balance. If it's primarily from the point of view of Laurent, and secondarily Cédric, and takes pains (though it's joyful, not painful) to make their love real (without any explicit nudity or sex though, just passionate kissing), it's just as much about the parents' difficult journey toward understanding of their sons' sexuality.

A beautiful gay coming-out-to-the-parents film that had an unusually high viewership and almost universally positive response when shown originally on French TV, this has meant a lot to a lot of gay men, especially young ones thinking about love and conflicts with parents and the kind of "intense love relationship such as I dream of having and regret not to have had up till now," as one young French blogger typically put it. In IMDb comments that rate it, it has gotten nothing but a 10/10: enough said? Splendid performances by everybody, especially Thouvenin, Guérin-Tillié, and Darlan; this is far more than a "TV movie" and like some of the best contemporary French films, manages to be both elegant and emotionally direct.

With his looks and personality, Cyrille Thouvenin is irresistible in the film: he's always running and leaping, troubled, vulnerable, acting out, but also bursting with youthful energy and smiles. The restrained but warm Eva Darlan is also very memorable. This is the kind of film a gay man can watch over and over, with much pleasure and some tears. Doing so is also helping my French quite a bit.

[Johann]

Hell Up In Harlem

I like this movie but I'm not sure I can explain why.

Black Caesar (Gibbs Jr.) is up in Harlem, working with his father Gibbs Sr. to clean up New York's mean streets.

People get shot a lot, death comes to the innocent and the guilty, there's a funky motown soundtrack by Edwin Starr (great in surround sound) and the blackness can't be beat brotha.

The plot is a little hard to follow, but basically it's just a relatively low-budget actioner from the early 70's that was a very popular sequel to Black Caesar which made Fred Williamson a star.

[Chris Knipp]

You'll Get Over It/À cause d'un garçon (2003) Netflix DVD.

Directed by Fabrice Cazeneuve, starring Julien Baumgartner as a lycée (high school) swim champ who gets outed by an admiring transfer from another school so he's forced to deal with being openly gay. This time the parents including the working class unionist dad are understanding. Memorable question from the dad at a dinner: "When you grow up, will you live with a man?" He says he doesn't know, but whatever he does, it will be frank and open. The lead isn't terrifically charismatic and the filmmaking isn't as fluid and winning as in Just a Question of Love, nor is there a satisfying gay relationship on offer, but this is a good treatment of the issues of girlfriend (she's not pleased) best mate (he remains a friend but wishes he'd been told) and classmates (swim team is mean, but coach protects him and when he wins a big meet for them, they come back).

[Chris Knipp]

Nettoyage à sec/Dry Cleaning (Anne Fontaine 1997). Netflix DVD.

In this Teorema-style menage a trois story, the sexy young Loïc (Stanislas Merhar), a former drag performer, comes to live with Jean-Marie and Nicole and help them run their dry cleaning establishment in a town near Lille (Belfort) -- and disrupts their lives gradually and completely by sexually tempting them both. It's not so much that they were bored and repressed as that they never thought of the kind of thrills Loïc so boldly offers and so have no resistance to them, besides which, Jean-Marie has homosexual tendencies he has hitherto repressed. Loic isn't there to disrupt; he can't help doing it, but what he wants is the stability of a home that he's never had. Despite the familiar premise, the treatment is intriguing, the unfolding of the story highly suspenseful. You don't know what's going to happen, and that goes especially for the last astonishing few moments. I don't know enough about Anne Fontaine, having only seen her somewhat strange 2001 Comment j'ai tué mon père (How I Killed My Father, also starring Berling). A common thread is bourgeois repression. Fontaine's fortes (exhibited more successfully in Dry Cleaning than in the over-ambitious later film) seem to be the slow burn and the jaw-dropper ending. It's fun to observe chaos methodically take over an ordered existence. All three actors are fine and well cast. This was a striking debut for Merhar, then 26, and his ability to tempt either sex is totally believable. The backgrounds and technical side are well handled, and the suspense shows directing and screenwriting skill (Fontaine is a writer, director, and actor). Five Cesar nominations, and a Cesar win for Merhar -- Most Promising Actor (Meilleur espoir masculin).

[bix171]

Amy Heckerling's film of Cameron Crowe's "non-fiction" year in a California high school is fairly faithful to the book (Crowe wrote the script which is just as implausible) and it holds up pretty well after twenty-five years. But it's the cast of young up-and-comers (Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates and the sublime Jennifer Jason Leigh) that makes the film work. Heckerling's comic timing was not yet fully developed--this was her first feature; she would be much more proficient in later films such as "Clueless" and "Look Who's Talking"--and Crowe has always been something of a killjoy, so there's a lot riding on cast chemistry and they deliever with the ease of old pros. A not bad way to pass an evening and a good way to intoduce your new teen to pitfalls of adolescence.

[bix171]

Well, Ridgemonth's back to Ridgemont. Curious about the t-shirt.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is my favorite actress, bar none. I know of few actresses working as fearlessly as her. "Miami Blues", "The Anniversary Party" (which she co-directed and co-wrote with Alan Cumming), "Mrs. Parker And The Vicious Circle", "The Hudsucker Proxy", "Single White Female" (she's great, the movie...not so great), "Short Cuts" (good in another bad film). Kubrick filmed her in "Eyes Wide Shut" but had to reshoot her scenes with another actress--God, what might have been!

Lotsa great actresses out there but Jennifer Jason Leigh, to me, knows no peer.

[Chris Knipp]

I deleted my post in the course of editing it but for the record here it is again.


You threw me off with that title, which relates to a satirical T-shirt series. It's been a long time since I saw this and I never thought I'd see Jennifer Jason Leigh described as "sublime." Didn't know about Amy HEckerling though I have seen Clueless, being a fan of Alicia Silverstone--I love her in Excess Baggage. Anyway, Fast Times sure is a classic from the great era of youth flicks, the fabulous Eighties. Here (http://www.pimpyourshirts.com/servlet/the-Mens-Vintage-T-dsh-Shirts-cln-Junk-Food-T-dsh-Shirts/Categories) is the T-shirt site but I think the Ridgemonth spelling is a typo there too.

Jennifer is too angst-ridden for me, but she is distinctive and the movies you mention are good ones or at least good roles for her. I love Miami Blues. Don't agree with you on Short Cuts, which I like, maybe partly because of a laser disk of it with hours of fabulous extras inlcluding an interview with Pauline Kael, with Robert Altman, a making of, and the texts of all the Raymond Carver stories.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by bix171
Jennifer Jason Leigh is my favorite actress, bar none. I know of few actresses working as fearlessly as her. "Miami Blues", "The Anniversary Party" (which she co-directed and co-wrote with Alan Cumming), "Mrs. Parker And The Vicious Circle", "The Hudsucker Proxy", "Single White Female" (she's great, the movie...not so great), "Short Cuts" (good in another bad film). Kubrick filmed her in "Eyes Wide Shut" but had to reshoot her scenes with another actress--God, what might have been!
Lotsa great actresses out there but Jennifer Jason Leigh, to me, knows no peer.

I'm so happy someone here agrees the great JENNIFER JASON LEIGH has no peer. She is simply the best American actress. No one can touch her.

*This is an excerpt of a list I posted of Favorite Female Performances of the 90s:

JENNIFER JASON LEIGH---- (Georgia)
ROMANE BOHRINGER-------(Savage Nights)
CRISSY ROCK------------- (Ladybird, Ladybird)
JULIETTE BINOCHE-------- (Three Colors: Blue)
EMILY WATSON----------- (Breaking the Waves)

*Here's an excerpt of my comments about her performance as Dorothy Parker:

"Which brings me to Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker. If film appreciation is a rather subjective endeavor, evaluating a performance is even more so. I happen to think Ms. Leigh is one of the best actors working in film and her performance here is the type of no-net, bravura acting that is quite rare. Few actors take such chances. She understood that for Mrs. Parker sitting around that table was like being up on stage. She understood that a "naturalistic" portrayal would be totally wrong for the character, after doing her typically thorough research into the real Dorothy Parker."

*Here's a comment about Altman's Kansas City:

" I like Kansas City more than most viewers because Jennifer Jason Leigh is my favorite actress."

*Even decidedly "B" movies like Heart of Midnight are immediately elevated by her performance into something worth watching.